Keys to Employability - soft skills development for empowering young people

Educational systems in contemporary Europe are facing many difficult challenges. Every year many young people graduate from high-school or university with an often high level of theoretical knowledge, but at the same time they lack practical skills that are essential on the labor market. As we live in a time of economical crisis and the unemployment rate among young adults is alarmingly high, many of those graduates struggle to find a job and are not able to start a successful career. As this problem has been widely acknowledged among organizations working with unemployed young people, there are various projects helping them developing competences essential in the process of entering a labor market. However, in many cases the youth workers still focus on hard competences and do not pay enough attention to developing soft skills, which are equally important. We believe that young people can become much more successful both in personal and professional life when they master certain set of social abilities. The proposed Training Course is designed to gather youth workers and leaders and provide them with an opportunity to explore and experience some new methods of developing soft skills that can be used while working with youngsters in their local communities. They will have a chance to go through an intensive training during which they will test several practical tools that aim at fostering various skills and abilities, such as team work, leadership, effective learning and others. Moreover, participants will have an opportunity to design and test some new methods that can be used in their everyday work. In the second part of the Training Course participants will also attend some sessions aiming at teaching them how to help young people find alternative forms of employment, using and promoting the concept of international youth mobility.