Living Land project develops an experimental framework for Youth Employability and Engagement Approach, promoting youth worker’s capabilities. LL aims to support and enhance young skills and competences through a link between social workers (in the PA- Public Administration) and youth workers (in NPO- Non Profit Organization). This approach uses youth work as an occasion to support vulnerable young group entering in the job market, but also feeling part of their communities. PA (municipalities, province, mountain community/parks) work together with the local NPO detecting vulnerable situations (NEET, unemployed young, economic and social disadvantages, disabilities, school drop-out), offering inclusion activities, bringing them closer to the job market. These activities aim to involve young in apprenticeship or traineeship experience linked with social and citizenship skills empowerment. The young involved become part of their community, with a strategic role and a leadership, promoting their empowerment and the recognition of their formal and non-formal skills and capabilities. It also fosters young assessment of transversal skills, in a Life Skills perspective. The 2 years’ project develops an innovative methodology at a local level, able to empower youth employability services and youth workers’ competences. We’d like to build a model accessible, replicable by different bodies or groups (NPO or PA) in order to facilitate any kind of non-formal activities to be carried out locally, valorizing, mapping and linking existing experiences for young. The key objective is to innovate youth workers approach, taking in charge vulnerable young. The other key objective is the creation of intervention model (LL Web Platform and Guidelines KIT) aimed to strength skills of youth workers and policy makers. The project would like to create an effective and operational tool to implement employability policies at local, national and European level. The local and final events and dissemination activities will be strategic in order to communicate and inform the effective impact that the project could arise. During the transnational meeting, partner will exchange point of views and will define the content of the intellectual outputs. The training will be useful to 20 youth workers ready to run out the pilot test locally. LL Guidelines KIT (01 output) will be a tool for training and it will contain examples, best practices and information about youth employability strategies. LL Web Platform (02 output) is an open access platform, with an easy and comfortable approach to be used by each youth workers or bodies (PA or NPO) to implement activities for young locally. LL is based on the young needs expressed in several year’s experience by the partners. Especially the needs to imagine a possible future and find a place in the world, giving meaning to their time; to know and test skills and competences, getting involved in an adult perspective; to have an adult key player as a reference that welcomes and accompanies them during the experience and beyond; to share experiences with peers and belong to a real group; to be recognized and discovered in their capabilities by the adult community; to learn new things, through a theoretical-practical training, and to compete in new contexts, different for example from school and family. LL stresses the youth spirit strengthening the capabilities of youth workers in charge to support them. The project, through a pilot action, at the end and after the project end involves at least 1 PA in each Country and 3 NPOs collecting and uploading to the platform some experiences addressed at least to 150 young among Europe. The project is based on the recent EU reflections about Traineeship and Apprenticeship systems, whose relevance and priority is emphasized by the EU documents and national local policies, such as The Guidebook for Policy Planners and Practitioners, but also reflects the suggestions of National Ministries regarding the construction of stronger competencies of youth workers in charge of these measures, who play a critical role in helping young people make a smoother transition from school to work (STW) or to find the right way to express their competences and skills. Empirical evidence suggests that both types of schemes can significantly improve young people’s employment prospects by contributing to the acquisition of work-related skills and experience in close alignment with employer requirements, leading to nationally recognized qualifications, enhancing young people’s links to the labour market, and providing young people with valuable first work experience. The consortium, involving 5 partners in 5 EU countries, is representative of a wide spectrum of Countries and of skills thanks to the involvement of important and articulated professional profiles and experiences.
The goal of the project was to support and enhance skills and competences of youth through both link and cooperation between social and youth workers(in NGOs and PA).The project aimed at promoting quality socio-educational activities,which could help the inclusion of youngsters both in conditions of structural fragility and in a position of temporary disorientation or vulnerability,with respect to their own training, project life and professional aims.This meas offering assistance to those who work directly with them, improving and building their capacities.Therefore, there was a need to extend the knowledge gathered and connect the gap between professional,activist and field work where needed,whether that be lack of cooperation, lack of information or access.Youth operators’ work is primarily important in the development of transversal, social and civil skills in the youngsters.That’s why LL was born with the aim of creating a toolkit that could give operational and methodological support to those workers.This methodological value derives from a common work that included a range of EU countries capable of providing the operator with a fairly complete picture of experiences,good practices and also operational suggestions and tools
The lack of prospects for young people in the job market was a serious problem in large parts of the EU; Corona Virus and other emergencies that occurred in our territories in the last two years made it even worst. Before we started to think about the project, we found that the highest unemployment rates were in the south of Europe. In Portugal, Italy and Croatia (three of the countries partners), a little more than one in three people in this age group were out of work. But there wasn’t a unique strategy, not at European neither at local level, and each government and NPO were answering differently to the problem, in order to promote youth inclusion and to reduce the unemployment of young people. That’s why Living Land wanted to create a model based on the comparison between different EU countries, linking PAs and NPOs that were investing on youngsters through traineeships and citizenship activities. We were witnessing the progressive aging of voluntary associations, which were no longer able to attract young people, and a constant disinvestment of young people with respect to participation in community life (parties, trade union organizations).