Yellow Brick Road – career guidance competencies’ training for youth workers

Origin of the idea

Unemployment rates in EU, the fast and changing business environment, our work practice in employees search and selection processes and our belief in youth workers as a mediators among business and young people, gave us an idea to develop an international training project, intended to develop youth workers’ competencies in the topic of employability/ career development.
The world is very demanding and challenging in our days. On the one hand, Europe is suffering from high unemployment rates. On the other hand, organizations struggle to find proper/right employees.
From our experience, young people who apply for a job, despite their background or education, doesn't know what particularly they're looking for or what their expectations are. Most of them are not conscious about their knowledge, skills personal traits and values. They also lack knowledge or experience how to participate in job interview and present themselves. This leads that in demanding labour market such individuals are often unemployed, or they accept the first job proposal they get. Without being aware of choices they make, they are unsatisfied and unproductive in their jobs. That usually leads to being unemployed again.
Youth workers properly equipped with certain competencies related to career consultation, working consciously within the topic of employability, can make an impact on increasing employability of young people.

Goals and objectives

• To develop youth workers competencies in the topic of career development:
o To deepen participants understanding on labour market and employer perspective at EU and national levels.
o Increase self-awareness of participants about themselves and their work with young people career development.
o Working with young persons’ values, attitudes and necessary skills. Equip youth workers with tools and methods.
• To exchange experiences, expertise and good practices on working with career guidance.
• To create environment for networking and further cooperation.

Methodological approach

Training programme will be based on principles of non-formal education. You can expect learning sessions based on experiential learning, including practising main skills of coaching and focus on self-awareness and proactivity in learning.

Partners’ Profile

We are looking for 5 more partner organizations, which are:
• Working within youth sector or with young people;
• Already working with young people career development;
• Able to attract 4 participants per country which fit participants’ profile.

Priorities are to the organizations from the countries which are facing high young people unemployment rates.

Participants’ Profile

Practitioners directly working with young people on career development or youth workers who want to explore this topic and start working within this field in order to increase young people employability.

Training place/ Venue

Training will be held in Daugirdiskes, Lithuania, for the 10 days in November, 2014.

Deadlines and costs

We are ready to apply for the 17th of March deadline to get funding from the Erasmus + Youth in Action Programme. Costs of board and logging will be covered by the organisers. Travel costs will be reimbursed according to Erasmus+ regulations.

How to apply

If you are interested in partnership, please fill in and send us back the partner identification form (attached below).
We will be waiting definite confirmation from the partners until 8th of March, 2014.
We will contact each partner individually in order to get more details and start our cooperation.

Contacts
If you have further questions please do not hesitate contacting Migle (email: migle.petkauskiene@gmail.com, Skype: miglosse, Mob.ph: +370 685 06547).