YoungSTARS
Start date: Feb 1, 2016,
End date: Mar 31, 2017
PROJECT
FINISHED
This project is a result of a SALTO training course realized in October 2014. During the SALTO training issues such as unemployment, and especially youth unemployment that are a major concern all over the EU also self-development of soft skills to present themselves during job interviews and developing abilities to raise their chances of employment. Universities and schools are not being updated about the market trends and as a result the employability of youth is decreasing, even though their education is increasing. Employers are asking for experience and most young people lack this, but also lack the understanding of the skills and experiences they actually have from their various life learning activities. Young people need to have more self-esteem to handle better situations that arise in the workplace. This youth exchange will look at the concept of employability and look at the various tools available to help youth to increase their employability. This includes developing soft skills and self-presentation techniques to better their self-esteem and quality for chances of employment. We hope that with the various workshops and activities the youth will gain the knowledge and the tools for them to understand the markets better and to increase their employability. We will look at issues like education, EVS, EURES, Europass and other EU tools and discuss these in details, sharing experiences with each other and giving a better understanding of how these work. Many young people have an attitude that there is no employment opportunities left and as a result they sit back waiting for an opportunity to come to them, and as a result we blame the system for this and in the long run the youth are getting depressed and giving up hope. We hope to give the understanding that there are many employment opportunities out there and it is our responsibility to go out and find the jobs. It is our responsibility to find the various incentives and tools available to us, in order to increase our employability and to create the employment opportunities we need.The project participants are young people that face these issues above, living in countries that have a very high youth unemployment rate and the idea of the project is to give the participants the tools and knowledge to develop each of these abilities and talents and share them in their communities to increase their employability, to make the correct educational choices based on the market needs and help young people prepare better for different employment opportunities. We will exchange good and bad practices from each country and put all the good practices together for formulate workshops and activities so that each of the partner organisations and other organisations can help more young people in these important and desperately needed areas.The objective of the project is to allow youth to acknowledge their talents to better their soft skills and self-promotion techniques and to discuss problems about youth unemployment and increasing employability. As the group is made up of many young people who are unemployed (and employed), the issues and the outcomes are vital and diverse to the participants.The profile of the participants is vital for this project and we will select the participants best for the project but at the same time giving priority to those who are disadvantaged.Discussions and debates will give the youth a different perspective of the problems and perhaps even new methods of addressing these problems. Workshops will be designed to maintain a European dimension as all groups will be made up of at least one person from each country allowing for cultural learning during the workshops. Workshops are designed around the various subjects allowing the different youth to discuss the issues and work together to solve problems and share experiences.Role playing will also be used to allow the participants to get another perspective of different problems as well as interviewing. This has proven to be very successful as it allows for the youth to see common problems from the viewer’s point of view rather than the actor. This also allows for innovative ways showing problems.Simulations are also done during the project, allowing people to take on roles which are opposite to their real roles. During the simulations the participants will take on roles to re-enact a real situation based on events and problems in the real world. The participants will work together in their different roles to solve problems and to find solutions to these problems. Important here is that the participants take on random roles which add additional learning tools as they need to think and act as the person they are simulating. Using all the above tools and methodologies the youth will learn through fun activities which are real, but are within a safe environment allowing them to learn from each other, make mistakes which can be corrected through discussions