YPA is an international coalition of more than 42 youth organizations representing 23 EU and non-EU countries. Our biannual General Assemblies are conceived to be a space where we all meet to discuss the different needs of both young people and youth work across countries, establishing partnerships&synergies to address these issues. In our last General Assembly in May 2020, held online due to the remaining effects of the European lockdown related to the COVID-19 sanitary crisis, many of our members, express their great concern about how this lockdown and the general sanitary and economic crisis is affecting young people and their continuation or access to training and employment. This way, and recognizing creativity and culture creation as a natural strong point of younger generations, there was a general call for a project that will involve different stakeholders and sectors in an effort to create better inclusive training according to the new skill needed to be fostered by COVID19 (especially creative and digital skills) as well as better employment and self-employment opportunities that will allow youngsters to get economically active even in a lockdown situation. In this context, the project is aiming at: - Enhance digital skills development&competencies of young people, reinforcing creativity&creative solutions to unemployment rates provoked by COVID-19. - Enabling collaborations between the youth sector&the business sector for inclusive digital cultural&creative job creation. Specific objectives have been envisioned&described under the section "Project description" TARGET GROUPS: Primary: Unemployed youngsters Secondary:- Youth workers in direct contact with unemployed youngsters- Local, national&international providers of digital employment opportunities for young people.- Policy-makers focused on education and economic youth activation. 35 unemployed youngsters will participate in LTT activity C1 and 10 additional ones in each one of the planned multiplier events, providing a total reach and engagement of 95 unemployment youngsters directly trained and engaged through the project. MAIN ACTIVITIES: A). Activities for the development of IOs, 1. Audiovisual training materials, I01- Digital skill-up! From 0 to 10 in a nutshell 2. A mobile APP (WeDoit 4.0) to connect young job-seekers and digital job providers (IO2 3. Policy recommendations aiming to foster youth employability B). Training activity C1: “Training for creative young digital starters" C). Dissemination activities including 1. International social media campaign 2. Six multiplier events D) Project management activities E) Exploitation activities aiming to 1. reach at least 50 youngsters&25digital businesses per country. 2. ensure massive used of IO1 audiovisual materials and 3. massive enrollment of job-seekers&job-producers to the APP (IO2). IMPACT: - At the LOCAL&NATIONAL LEVEL, 1. Increased young people tools&competencies needed to come up with creative&innovative digital solutions to face the risks brought by COVID-19 through: - Promotion&use of the different audiovisual materials developed in IO1 helping young people to get digitally skilled through non-formal education. -Implementation of several exploitations training activities oriented to bring the training benefits (on creative, entrepreneurial, and digital skills) of the project far beyond the project consortium&project timeline. - Implementation of several dissemination activities aimed at increasing the awareness of the different tools and opportunities available for the development of creative, digital&entrepreneurial skills. 2. Increased rates of youth employability&job creation in the digital cultural&creative sectors through: - Promotion&use of the developed APP (IO2) where job seekers&job providers can directly meet&interactuate. - Entrepreneurial training&provided mentorship for the development of youngsters entrepreneurial ideas in the cultural&creative sector. - Direct connections between youth work, young people&businesses in the creative&cultural sector - Discussion of policy recommendations fostering youth employability. 3. Increase the quality&Recognition of youth work through: - Reinforcement of youth networks&youth work professional competences to train and reactivate youngsters through a non-formal context. - Enabling visibility of youth work&the positive impacts&benefits of its projects for youth inclusion&reactivation. - At the EUROPEAN&INTERNATIONAL LEVEL, 1. Reinforce cross-sectoral cooperation for the economic activation of young people and the recuperation of the cultural&creative sectors 2. Increased rates of youth employability&job creation in the digital cultural&creative sectors through the international promotion&use of the developed APP 3.Increase recognition of youth work by providing inspiring examples of projects&initiatives aiming at better training and economic reactivation of young people through non-formal education.
In this context, the project was directly aiming at: - Enhance digital skills development and competencies of young people, reinforcing creativity and creative solutions to unemployment rates provoked by COVID-19. - Enabling collaborations between the youth sector and the business sector for inclusive digital cultural and creative job creation. Specifically, through the different activities designed and implemented the project was aiming aims at: - Develop youngster's creativity through digital skills for the development of innovative solutions to the negative consequences of the COVID19 pandemic. - Close the digital skills gap and ensure that new generations are prepared to embrace the opportunities of an even more digitalized labor market. - Enabling a platform where potential employers and young jobseekers can meet and work together. - Helping on the recuperation of the European cultural and creative sector, vital for the economic, social, and mental wellbeing of our communities. - Conducting policy-oriented work on best practices to further empower and promote self-employability of young people in Europe.
By the time our Consortium was defining this project, Covid-19 was leading to the emergence of a "lockdown generation", hitting greatly young people’s job prospects. According to the data collected by the International Labour Organization (ILO) the pandemic was having a "devastating and disproportionate" impact on youth employment, while figures in 2021 were showing young people facing major obstacles in continuing training and education, moving between jobs, and entering the labor market. Before the pandemic, EU youth unemployment (15-24) was 14.9%, down from its peak of 24.4% in 2013, but in July 2020, it rose to 17%. The European Commission’s summer 2020 economic forecasted that the EU economy will shrink 8.3% in 2020, in the deepest recession of EU's history. But in the other way of this lockdown crises, figures on the great need for further digital skills and employment were striking. In an increasingly data-driven future - the European Commission believed that there could be as many as 756,000 unfilled jobs in the European ICT sector by the end of 2020 - with these numbers exponentially growing due to the impact of the COVID19 pandemic. On the basis of this context our YPA GA conceived a project responding to a needed synergy between 1.creativity and culture creation as a natural strong point of younger generations 2. promotion and empowerment of digital skills among youngsters 3. economic activation of youngsters through digital jobs.