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Bridging the gap between youth work and employers - feasibility visit
Start date: Jan 1, 2015, End date: Mar 31, 2015 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Many european countries suffer from youth unemployment for a range of reasons, and that is why we wanted to develop project to address this issue and look at supporting youth workers in competence development skills (for the further support of the development of competencies of the young people they work with). There is a proved match between skills demanded by employers and skills developed in youth organisations. Out of studies, such as The European Youth Forum?s study about the contribution of non-formal education in terms of increased employability, the soft skills that employers most frequently demand include communication skills, organisational/planning skills, decision-making skills, team working skills, confidence/autonomy and numeracy. Five of these six most frequently demanded soft skills that employers require are also being amongst those skills developed to a greater extent in youth organisations, the exception being numeracy. These soft skills are seen as a key element for successful job performance. Certain personality traits are also found to be important components of these skills and competencies, contributing to their development. For example, sense of initiative and pro-activity are traits associated with confidence/autonomy and entrepreneurship. Employers do also have a positive attitude towards young people?s experience in youth organizations. Employers however stress a special emphasis on the way of presenting the skills and competences (what they present, how they present it has more impact than what is written on the paper) acquired during the participation in youth work, which is an area where there is still room for lots of improvement. We had an idea to organise a seminar or training course in which we deal with these issues that are mentioned above, and to see where and how we can bridge youth work?s flexibility to adapt to the needs and weak points that employers are emphasising. This goes in line with the recommendation of the European Youth Forum to work further on the transitioning to employability: there is a need to greater guidance and coaching for young people so that they are better able to present effectively the skills and competences they develop in the youth sector in job applications and that they are able to better understand how these skills may be applied in working environments, and can contribute to the performance of specific job-related tasks. Young workers should be made more aware about the value that employers place on the skills and the competencies developed in the youth work, and youth workers can be trained in how to support the young people they work with, in this topic. That was the central focus for a project we would like to develop. All partner organisations were very motivated to work on this issue, but as we hadn´t cooperate yet as partners together and as we would like developed future project in real partnership this needs extra time and space for clarifications. Also to see how to bring together different realities of european countries. That was mostly what happened during this project and outcome is international long-term training course called "The Job Affair" with more partners applied for the deadline of 30 April by slovak organisation Orbis Institute with number 2015-2-SK02-KA105-000611.
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