Youth unemployment is a pressing issue in the EU and beyond. In 2016, more than 6.3 million young people (i.e. 15-24 years) were neither in employment nor in education or training (NEETs) in the EU. In some EU candidate countries, especially in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, the proportion of NEETs is even higher, as it is in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Youth unemployment often affects the target group of vulnerable and disadvantaged young adults, including socially marginalized groups such as Roma. A major reason for unemployment in this group is that they are alienated or prevented from attending or finishing formal education. Thus, they often cannot provide a proof of their competences in the form of formal qualifications. It is particularly important for this group to have their informally and non-formally acquired competences assessed and recognized. This will help them find a job that best suits their competence profile and increase their self-esteem and empower them to take part (again) in the social and economic life. A main objective of CORE is therefore helping vulnerable and disadvantaged young adults find their way (back) into education and/or employment. For this, the ProfilPASS tool for competence assessment developed by the German Institute for Adult Education – Leibniz Center for Lifelong Learning will be adapted to the needs of vulnerable and disadvantaged young adults. The ProfilPASS has been the center of various EU projects and was translated and successfully implemented in several EU countries (including France, Ireland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece, Spain, Sweden, Slovenia, Serbia and Albania - for details, see www.profilpass-international.eu). In the most recent project SCOUT (2017-1-DE02-KA204-004194), the ProfilPASS in Simple Language, a version for new immigrants, was developed. The ProfilPASS starts from the assumption that every person has acquired skills throughout their lifetime but that they are often not aware of them. Work with the ProfilPASS helps in revealing and documenting hidden competences. CORE will adapt parts of the original ProfilPASS for Young People and develop additional material in order to meet the needs of disadvantaged and vulnerable young adults. Complementary to this, a toolkit will be developed in which already existing tools for competence assessment suitable for the target group will be collected in all partner countries and systematically compiled. The adapted ProfilPASS will form the core of this toolkit. The ProfilPASS is a self-evaluation tool helping people reflect on themselves which can be a challenging process. Therefore, the help by a professional counsellor is an essential precondition for working with the ProfilPASS successfully. CORE does justice to this by focusing on a second main objective, the development of counsellors’ competences. Through accompanying material to the toolkit and training, counsellors will be supported and professionalized in their work with vulnerable and disadvantaged young adults. As accompanying material, a manual for counsellors will be developed in which information and guidelines on working with the toolkit and the adapted ProfilPASS materials will be provided. A specialized training curriculum will be set up summarizing guidelines and content for a training of new counsellors on the basis of previous successful training design and delivery in countries of the former Yugoslavia. Overall, 15 new counsellors (3 in each partner country) will be trained for applying the toolkit and the adapted ProfilPASS materials. The trained counsellors will use the materials by conducting a competence assessment with overall 100 young adults (20 in each partner country) in a testing phase. The participants of the testing phase will benefit from the competence assessment and will be supported in finding a job or an educational program that suits their competence profile. Both the training and the testing phase will be evaluated and the results will be used for making final revisions to the project outputs. To sum up, CORE pursues two main objectives which will be achieved through the development of two intellectual outputs: the toolkit for competence assessment (incl. the adapted ProfilPASS materials) and the accompanying materials to the toolkit (manual and curriculum). These outputs will be made available as OER in all partner languages and in English ensuring that all interested stakeholders throughout Europe (and even worldwide) can use the products, also after the completion of the project. Disadvantaged and vulnerable young adults can benefit from professional competence assessment in a long term meaning that their (re-)integration into the labour market and into society is facilitated. Counsellors will be provided with useful tools and material for their work with this target group but also with other clients and their counselling work will be professionalized.
As there were hardly any counselling structures and services in the Balkan countries, the aim of this project was to prepare and professionalize counsellors for working with the target group of disadvantaged young adults. For this purpose, a toolkit was developed with competence assessment tools tailored to the needs of young adult NEETs, together with a manual and a curriculum for newly trained and experienced counsellors. These project materials support counsellors as they work and transfer their CORE project experience to different contexts, which is especially beneficial in Balkan countries. Another achieved aim was to facilitate NEETs' access to education, training or employment by assessing and evaluating their informal and non-formal competences, and to promote (re)integration into society, avoiding negative long-term consequences for themselves and society. Finally, the aim has been to make all developed materials available as OER in all partner languages and in English, so that all interested stakeholders across Europe and worldwide can use the products, even after the end of the project.
In 2016, more than 6.3 million young people (15-24 in age) in the EU were neither in employment nor in education or training (i.e. “NEET”). The aim and background of the project is to contribute to combating youth unemployment in Europe by competence assessment and to facilitate access to professional counselling and support for young adults in the Balkan countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia), as there are hardly any counselling structures and services there. This is reflected in the fact that there are many NEET young adults living in these countries. The disadvantaged and vulnerable young adults are often not in a position to acquire a formal qualification, thus having no proof of their competences. Therefore, it is essential to identify and evaluate their informally and non-formally acquired competences and so support them in finding a job that best suits their competence profile. Furthermore, with the help of the CORE materials, the NEETs' self-esteem is strengthened, and they are empowered to (re-)participate in social and economic life. They are additionally supported by the CORE-Toolkit, which compiles and informs about existing support services in the respective countries.