Youth@Work - The impact of youth work on youth employability and entrepreneurship

Organised by

Agenzia Nazionale per i Giovani, the Erasmus+ National Agency of Italy, and the Erasmus+ National Agency of North Macedonia, on behalf of the Youth@Work Partnership on Youth Employability and Entrepreneurship of Erasmus+ National Agencies.

Description of the activity (dates, venue, aims, objectives, target group, number of participants)

The seminar, organised by the Youth@Work Partnership, focuses on the core pillars on which the Partnership is based: youth work, entrepreneurship, and employability. It aims to bring attention to the impact that youth work has on supporting young people’s employability and entrepreneurship by: providing emotional support (people to lean on), social capital (personal connections), practical support (including financial), competences (how to get on in life), and by promoting enterprise and young people’s agency, with a range of skills which employers want for young people to be work ready, and that are equally important for the self- employed and business/social start-ups.

We have good examples of recognition of youth work in Europe, but there are still many countries where the value of this “service” offered to local communities to empower young people is underestimated.

Through this seminar, the Youth@Work Partnership, wants to gather examples that tell how beneficial the impact of youth work on youth employability and entrepreneurship can be.

The objectives of the Seminar are:

Showcasing good practices of the impact of youth work on youth employability and entrepreneurship

Demonstrating the added value of youth work and volunteering to youth employability and youth entrepreneurship

Highlighting volunteering as a bridge between young people and employment/entrepreneurship

Promoting the Erasmus+ and European Solidarity Corps EU Programmes (2021 - 2027) as tools supporting youth work to foster youth employability and entrepreneurship

Initiate the creation of a network of good examples that could inspire European young people and support the recognition of youth work in all European countries.

The seminar will be held in Parma, Italy from 13 to 18 February 2023 (including arrival and departure days). The event will see the participation of 25 youth workers from Programme countries of Erasmus+.

The participants will have the opportunity to share good practices on the impact of youth work on youth employability and entrepreneurship, and to contribute to the creation of a digital booklet that will be available in the Resources of the Youth@Work Partnership’s website. Participants are invited to bring good examples of successful stories in which they have been involved or that they have got to know about. The “stories” should be video recorded and should contain the necessary elements to value their impact!

The good practices of youth work’s impact on youth employability and entrepreneurship can be from all areas and priorities covered by Youth@Work (social entrepreneurship, sustainable development, green entrepreneurship, women’s economic entrepreneurship and economic empowerment, competence development, volunteering, solidarity, social inclusion, environmental awareness, eco-literacy, social innovation, mental health and wellbeing, digital education and development).

During the preparation of the event the selected participants will be asked to video record the “stories” that they wish to tell and throughout the Seminar the “digital story telling” will be organized in different sessions to allow proper sharing, analysis and dissemination of the experiences. The digital booklet will be created during the Seminar. The selected participants will receive detailed instructions on how to prepare their “story”.

YOUTH@WORK PARTNERSHIP

In 2018, a consortium of 11 Erasmus+ Youth/European Solidarity Corps National Agencies (NAs) and 5 SALTO-YOUTH Resource Centres created the Youth@Work Partnership on Youth Employability and Entrepreneurship, with the aim to better tackle youth employability and entrepreneurship by working collaboratively, based on a common strategy.

Youth@Work is the alliance of the Erasmus+/European Solidarity Corps National Agencies of Italy (the leading NA), Cyprus, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Malta, Poland, Republic of North Macedonia, Spain, and Turkey, as well as of the SALTO-YOUTH Eastern Europe and Caucasus (Poland), SALTO-YOUTH South East Europe (Slovenia) and SALTO-YOUTH Training and Cooperation (Germany) Resource Centres, as well as the Resource Centre for the European Solidarity Corps (Austria). It has been running since January 2018. For more information about Youth@Work, please visit our website - www.youthatworkpartnership.org and social media channels.

Requested profile

The eligible profiles:

Youth workers from the Youth@Work community (Pool of Trainers; National and Regional Consultative Groups; former participants in Youth@Work events)

Youth work practitioners

Representatives of (youth) organisations, private and public entities working to support competences development of young people

Policymakers, researchers and representatives of the business sector, witnesses of successful stories as required by this call

All applicants will have to prove through the application the actual impact of the story they would like to share.