From March 15 to 21, the International Partnership-building activity ‘What a YOUTH Job Culture Would Look Like?’ is held in Vilanova i la Geltrú (Barcelona), coordinated by the Fundació Catalunya Voluntària in association with 17 other non-governmental and not-for profit organizations from Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Poland, Portugal and Turkey, with the aim of contributing our knowledge and experiences to find solutions to one of the problems that most concern young people across Europe: finding a decent job.
There will be 24 people, responsible for theseNGOs (including a national volunteer center and an informal network of people), who will reflect on
1) what capabilities help young people find a decent job? Since the NGOs we are doing non-formal and intercultural learning, and we are capable of offering and recognizing these skills;
2) what practices and activities can we consider most useful in this transition process? Since we are carrying out various job and semi-job practice activities that work
3) what would a YOUTH job culture look like? And, if the concept succeeds, how can fostering the concept help us create better working conditions for young people and for everyone?
Over the course of 5 days we will learn about the programs focused on training and job placement, the skills for decent employment, the job and semi-job internship programs and the aid that exists to create new start-ups, businesses and companies, in order to be able offer these opportunities to young people who are unemployed or dissatisfied with their work.
Our thesis is that an obstacle that makes it difficult for many young people not to find a job in line with their skills and interests is the existence of a predominant adult work culture, against which we propose a YOUTH job culture, understood as one in which It is possible to work without giving up a way of being and thinking. Aware of the complexity of the issue and the enormous variety of situations and differences between participating countries, we are going to analyze how youth organizations can help young people in the process of searching for job or, even before starting that search, when they participate in volunteering, exchanges and non-formal and intercultural trainings, in order to better understand which are the actions (information, training and support/guidance) that most help them have a decent job, and which are the skills that we can reinforce through the set of programs we are carrying out.
In less than a week we will learn practices and activities from a multidisciplinary group of youth workers, managers and educators, selecting those that can most help young people face the world of work, prevent them from being victims of discrimination and, potentially, of labor exploitation, as well as promoting self-knowledge, initiative and resilience.
In the activity, done with the support of the Erasmus + program of the European Commission (Mobility for youth workers) we will discover some of the challenges, trends, programs, grants for unemployed youth from a European perspective, and learn new approaches and methods from the youth and non-profit sector. We aspire, in this way, to be able to channel the energies and capacities of young people in the search and creation of their own jobs, aligned with their interests and competencies.
Do you have any ideas or initiatives on how we could create a YOUTH job culture?
Are you interested in moving deeper into this tòpic or need more information? Contact us by email at projects@catalunyavoluntaria.cat