Context and background: In August 2020 over 3 million young persons (under 25) were unemployed, reflecting a youth unemployment rate of 17.6% (Eurostat Aug.2020). According to the OECD this figure is likely to rise up to 30% due to the economic crisis triggered by the COVID19 pandemic. This reinforces the already existing shortcomings of the Youth Guarantee and Youth Employment Initiatives which helped to reduce youth unemployment since the 2009 economic crisis, but are often not sufficiently adapted to the needs of those facing multiple barriers, such as poverty, social exclusion, disability and discrimination. One of the main concerns of youth workers is how to reduce drop-out rates of those hard-to-reach target groups of NEETs. Another concern is the lack of digital tools to support continued contact between youth worker and NEETs. Objectives: The main objective of the project is to improve the implementation of the insertion itineraries in which young people participate, who are often from demographic groups with some situation of social vulnerability such as youth from disadvantaged backgrounds, newly arrived immigrants with difficulties for cultural and linguistic adaptation, ethnic minorities, youth with economic difficulties, and other problems that may lead to social exclusion. As a response to the shortcomings of the current youth programmes, the looming increase of youth unemployment, the connected social exclusion of the most vulnerable youth and the need for more innovative digital practices in youth services, the partnership proposes to develop the digital Able4work App that facilitates the mentoring, guidance and contact between youth workers and NEETs and is a support tool to adapt more efficiently to the target groups’ needs. The COVID19 crisis makes this tool even more necessary as the current situation often restricts personal contacts and face-2-face support, leaving the most vulnerable youth on their own in an exceedingly difficult situation. The project directs its work at the following two Target Groups: - Target Group A: youth workers who work as mentors/trainers with disadvantaged youths and NEETs, performing socio-labour integration programmes and offer support, advice, guidance and training for vulnerable youth - Target Group B: youth between 18-35 years that are unemployed or NEETs, and are in some situation of social vulnerability Number and profile of participants: The Able4work project gathers a consortium of partners who work within the framework of these Youth employment initiatives and have witnessed first-hand the shortcomings of the Youth support programmes. It brings together 6 partners from the 5 EU Member States Spain, Germany, Sweden, Poland and Greece. These represent a mix of NGOs, SMEs and a vocational school, who all contribute complementary skills to the project, such as youth counselling and mentoring, training youth, developing employment support tools, and ICT skills. Description of activities: A Needs Analysis in preparation of the project application had responses from 385 youths and 150 youth workers who confirm the need, interest and positive attitudes of the target groups towards the proposed Able4work Toolkit. The innovative element of the Able4work App is to digitalize, virtualize and gamify the personalised itinerary of support programmes of the Youth Guarantee and the Youth Employment Initiatives aimed at unemployed youths or NEETs, when normally these itineraries are only related to a personal face-to-face follow-up of each case. Methodology: Able4work App will be translating the phases of the itinerary into a set of digital "tests" and stages where the young person can follow the story to find schedules, opportunities, self-evaluation, resources and support in a digital and virtual game format which evokes additional motivation of the youth and enhances the success in the achievement of the itineraries. This will be achieved in a set of tasks where the partners jointly develop the outputs, but each bring in their special expertise. Results and impact: The envisaged impact of the Able4work Toolkit is to continuously engage vulnerable youth into their preparation and training for a successful integration into work or training and thereby enhancing their chances of success and social integration. This will improve social services especially in difficult situations such as the restrictions of the COVID19 pandemic. Longer term benefits: The ABLE4WORK tools have the potential of being established as viable tools for employment itineraries, being used by public services in general across the EU. The long term plan sees the ABLE4WORK tools fully integrated in the different EU Youth Guarantee programs, working fully complementary to EURES and the Public Employment Service Network and thereby supporting EU policies and catering for all unemployed people and vulnerable social groups with a useful toolset for their placement in the labour market.
The Able4work toolkit App had these specific objectives: - combine career guidance and advice with digital gaming aspects - support the job search process that young people perform with the mentors in their individual process of job guidance - enforce that the youths themselves are the protagonists of their own job search process thus promoting the value of responsibility - promote the routine of active job search and internalisation of knowledge worked during individual sessions - allow digital interaction between youth and youth workers as well as scheduling and management of tasks - enable youth workers through a digital tool to improve the efficiency of their contact and control over the youth’s activities to find employment or training - reduce the dropout rate of young participants in the job search process.
The project was presented due to the consequences that we were having due to the COVID-19 pandemic situation in our projects and in our users, especially the youngest ones. The impossibility of seeing us in person with our users meant that we lost contact and made it difficult to carry out an effective follow-up and to be able to guide them in their job placement process. At the beginning of the pandemic, we as professionals did not have tools that would make it easier for us to monitor our work. That is why we thought of creating a digital tool that would help us achieve this goal.