Taking into consideration the current situation with the COVID 19 it is a obvious that it has a serious influence on youth employment and will lead to higher youth unemployment rate. Our life has changed overnight. Our work, our world have been paralysed. Youth employment, and youth employment promotion, are no exceptions. The virus is particularly lethal for old people. But in our labor markets also young people suffer from “chronic illnesses” (“condition of young people not in employment, education or training”) making them very vulnerable to the Covid-19. Currently big issue is the on-going high unemployment in the involved countries of the project partnership, that is going to increase as a consequences of COVID 19 crisis. The YEI project aims to contributing to reduce the number of youth not in education, employment and training by Provision of supported employment services for vulnerable youth provided by youth coaches. The proposed methodology will strengthen and enhance especially the soft-skills of young people (including the young people with disadvantages) as communication, self-esteem, social competencies and self-reliance to support them in their training phase in order to perfectly prepare them for their professional career. The objectives addressing the current identified needs of the target group of the project is to give a contribution to a more socio-economic, inclusive and sustainable society by involving especially the young people with disadvantages. The second objective is to equip the involved organisations with new methods and approaches by combining the creative context with the educational context in a non-common way. Therefore not only the young people will benefit from the project, but trainers and educators do so too. The Project Participants are Young persons threatened to be excluded from the education system/labour market (15 – 29) that will be selected by the involved project organizations. In the project will be the involved 60 youngsters, 6 trainers/youth coaches and the 100 people attending the dissemination events. Project covered different activities that could lead to project results: Report of the state of youth coaching services that involving young peoples thoughts on youth coaching support they need and their current status of soft skills, which gives a quick overview to trainers and the expert about the current situation, specific needs and interests, - a set of training materials and training paths to follow youth coaching in supported employment services. - second report - The conduction of short interviews and focus groups in order to produce a second report following the same structure as the first one but done at the end of the project implementation after the completion of all training courses and paths, allowing the evaluation of the impact on the youngsters and the before-after status, opening the possibility for best practice and the development of a short guidebook summarizing the experiences, training examples and sharing the results to the wide public; -report of research work on the elaboration of implementing guidelines on supported employment services, quality standards and quality assurance standards (criteria, indicators etc.) on youth coaching and work assistance service in project partner countries - A website and exchange platform, giving the expert a possibility to follow the training online and allowing an exchange, problems and difficulty solving in case needed -Developing a short guideline of best practices occur during the implementation period, training materials and experiences of all project partners. - dissemination of the guideline via the main networks, in and outside the organizations and made available for the broad public to reach a big number of interested stakeholders and other relevant organizations/ institutions working with the target group of young people with and without disadvantages. The project will have impact on the participants taking part in the YEI project to equip with new skills to provide supportive employment services (trainers) and to strengthening their soft-skills in make them more competitive to the job market. The participating organizations will have skilled youth coaches and the short guideline and the training materials used a sustainable, transferable and more over verified source for an approach which could be re-used whenever suitable and disseminated via further networks. Concentrating on the development and strength of tolerance skills and creating enable environment for supported employment services provided by youth coaches, the YEI project will deliver an important contribution to decrease unemployment rates and difficulties within the social systems especially important after COVID 19 crisis, and do therefore have an increasing rate of followers within Europe.
By implementing Youth Employment Initiative project, partner organizations wanted to give contribution to a more socio-economic, inclusive and sustainable society. YEI project was designed to provide support to young people – potential job-seekers to identify their skills and work preferences through offered individual support to be active into the labor market, to obtain and maintain the job by using an innovative and creative way of learning, thinking and reflecting. The other project objective was know-how transfer of actions aimed to equip the partner organizations with new methods and approaches by combining the creative context with the educational context in a non-common way. Implementing this project, partner organizations wanted to play a significant role in the promotion and development of employment opportunities for people with disabilities and people in social risk to access and stay in employment, and to offer services that can became an integral part of the methodologies used by professionals in their work with young people.
The idea of the Youth Employment Initiative project emerged from the desire of three European organizations to support young people’s success on the labor market through introducing supported employment services for vulnerable youth provided by youth coaches. The labor market situation in the partner organizations countries of Italy, North Macedonia and Romania is characterized by low economic activity and high unemployment rates. The current COVID 19 pandemic had and still has a serous influence on youth employment, particularly on employment of disadvantaged young people that leads to a higher unemployment rate and young people excluded from the labor market. The countries have been attempting to reduce unemployment, through policy creation and undertaking measures, while encouraging collaboration between institutions and NGOs emphasized that know-how transfer of actions can have a positive influence. The rationale of the Youth Employment Initiative project in terms of needs is the need for more decreasing unemployment rate among young people and necessity of employment services to support young people entering the labor market and create equal opportunities for young people with disabilities and/or disadvantaged young people.