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Languages - the Opportunity to Beat Youth Unemployment
Start date: Sep 1, 2015, End date: Feb 29, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

The European societies are currently facing a lot of social problems, yet we all all know that youth unemployment is one of the biggest issues of today. As a result of this, youth often gets socially excluded from the society and finds it difficult to actively participate in it. However, youth needs to understand that due to current globalisation, foreign language skills are a key asset when looking for a job, especially in an international company; thus, youth must actively learn new languages.To promote this concept and teach youth the necessary language skills, a project “Languages - the Opportunity to Beat Youth Unemployment” will be hosted in Lithuania. It will consist of two actions: youth workers mobility (October 4-10, 2015) and a youth exchange (November 1 – November 7 2015). The project is implemented by organizations from countries where youth unemployment, lack of professional foreign language skills, little collaboration with other EU states and other social problems are especially acute (Spain, Italy, Turkey, Greece, Romania, Lithuania). In the 1st action there will be 24 youth workers involved (4 / country)/; while the 2nd action will have 36 participants (5 unemployed youngsters aged 18-30, 1 youth worker from the 1st action / country). Priority will be given to those from disadvantaged backgrounds and with fewer opportunities. A group of trainers from all partner countries will coordinate all the activities so that everything would go smoothly.By providing youth with new skills for learning languages and revealing new work opportunities where this can be used, we would like to contribute to minimizing youth unemployment. Hence, the main objectives of the project are: (1) acquaint youth workers with the newest language learning methods and tools so they could share the knowledge with the unemployed youth, their communities; (2) teach the unemployed youth on how to easily learn new languages, and thus get employed or create their own enterprises by using these skills; (3) reveal job opportunities in Europe and promote possible careers in the EU; (4) Motivate youth to learn (at least 1) new language so they could share their motivation in their community and increase youth collaboration within the EU. The project also aims to help the participants grow professionally, keep them active, involve them in multi-cultural discussions, develop a number of skills and competences and create new partnerships across Europe. In order to achieve these objectives, a range of NFE methods developed by all the partner organisations will be employed. The main activities will identify the benefits of language learning, show that non-formal language learning is possible too, reveal best tools for doing it, increase participants' motivation, and create the means of spreading information about the idea to the public. Involvement, creativity and initiative of all the participants will be encouraged throughout the activities, which will include: 1) interactive workshops on language learning, 2) generation of new NFE methods & tools, 3) discussions in non-formal environment, 4) meeting multilingual speakers, human resource managers, youth coaches, 5) country presentations, 6) visits to language centers, 7) analyses of relevant video materials, 8) specialized group exercises, games, quizzes, and much more. Since the project goal is to reach the public and disseminate the results effectively: 9) special photos & videos, 10) workshops for unemployed youth, and 11) website will be prepared by the participants. All of this will ensure that the project would induce a positive effect on the participants, organisations and the target groups in regional, national and international levels. General public and unemployed youth within it are expected to be impacted as well. Firstly, the participants will share the knowledge acquired throughout the project in workshops for the unemployed within their own communities. Youth workers will will also start teaching foreign languages to their community members. Likewise the participating organizations will employ social media and similar future projects to promote new methodologies of language learning/teaching. The results dissemination will also be facilitated through involvement of digital media and spreading of videos and e-booklet prepared during the project. As a result, unemployed youth in participating countries are expected to increase their chances of getting employed and/or actively involved in the society.The project is anticipated to not only help participating youth enhance their skills and get involved in collaborative work throughout Europe with foreign languages, but also increase general awareness of the importance of learning languages in participating countries. As a result, long-term benefits of better cooperation between youth in different countries, and reduced youth unemployment are expected; thus, making the project results very important.
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