ACTIVacting the E-factors: empowering education for European employability and entrepreneurship

This training course targets youth workers in particular. For us this means, people who are sharing with youngsters part of their time and who are willing to keep in mind the issue of employability when organizing activities and projects, as well as when defining learning objectives. Youth workers might be social workers, educators, teachers or youth workers who work for NGO’s and/or local municipalities. We are not targeting volunteers or youngsters in general with this training course. Youth unemployment is one of the most relevant challenges in contemporary Europe. The international financial crisis makes the challenge more visible and problematic, especially for younger generations: unemployment is a growing threat to youngsters all over Europe. Any current public agenda includes youth unemployment as one of the biggest current challenges and main political concern. Future developments in European youth policy seem to lean towards employability demands. The European Comission's proposed “Erasmus for All” Programme focus on education and training systems that deliver skills needed in the labour market. This same focus on employability deviates attentions from “traditional” fields of youth work, like self development, participantion and active citizenship. The sole focus on unemployment challenges closes many other important doors, equally important for a successful happy life. Individual empowerment provides youngsters with needed motivation, autonomy and responsibility to control their own life (including, but not restricted to “getting a job”). Nevertheless youth workers are asked to tackle unemployment issues – despite not being counsellors nor officials working for State employment agencies. This training course departs from this problematic and pretends to contribute to: • Deepen the understanding of employability as part of European youth work; AND • Strengthen the role of Non Formal Education in employability and civic participation. In order to achieve that, we set up the following specific objectives: • To deepen the understanding of employability; • To compare contexts of youth unemployment in Europe; • To promote a reflection on the new role of youth workers and its dimensions; • To deepen the understanding of European youth work's political context/dimension; • To contextualize the Youthpass as a certification, strategy and and as an individual reflection process (L2L); • To increase participants' competence in using NFE to support youth employability; • To improve the competence of empowering and communicating with young people; • To deepen the understanding of “sense of initiative and entrepreneurship” competence; • To explore the relationship between sense of initiative/entrepreneurship and employability; • To share methods and tools that foster the “sense of initiative and entrepreneurship” competence development; • To strengthen civic competence as a part of an holistic approach to European youth work; • To recognize EU funding as an instrument for for developing youngsters' E-factor (learning • mobility, working mobility, experiencing international dimension); • To promote an exchange of practices in youth work good practice exchange; • To explore needs, potentials and strategies for co-operation in the future; • To develop an action plan to be realised in participant's everyday job. The course is based on the principles of non-formal education and will favour a holistic and experiential approach based on participants’ needs, motivations and experiences. We will be hosted in a “Training House” that is suited to run the sessions and live together. It's a very nice house with a big garden, northwest of central Berlin. - website only in German http://www.juhu-heiligensee.de/unterk%C3%BCnfte-im-kinder-und-jugendg%C3%A4stehaus-heiligensee) We will build on the group process and individual development. This means we live, work, cook and sleep in the same house. Upstairs are the 7 bedded bedrooms, downstairs the working rooms and kitchen, where we will cook tasty meals together. Rui Montez, Giulia Mastropirro and Marie Svensson will be the trainers in the TC. They come from different backgrounds and therefore they bring different – but complementary – approaches to youth work, employability, self development and empowerment.