Project Description

Young people are often encouraged to develop the technical skills needed to enter the labour market, but competencies on how to conduct themselves in the workplace, as well as create opportunities for employment mobility for themselves can be neglected, despite disadvantaged young people having few opportunities to be exposed to these key skills.

The project ‘Youth Employability Competences’ (YEC) seeks to provide opportunities, materials and raising awareness to put this ‘blind spot’ into the spotlight. It makes a contribution to actively strengthen the employability competences of mainly disadvantaged youths by applying a comprehensive approach that includes all relevant stakeholders such as youth workers and employers, but also policy makers and institutions with connection to young people.

The project ‘Youth Employability Competences’ (YEC) has therefore 4 main objectives:

  • Increase the employability of young people
  • Increase the validation of young people’s employability competences
  • Increase the engagement of young people, promoting their empowerment, and employers in competency tool development
  • Increase the focus on young people’s employability among young people and youth workers/practitioners and promoting quality youth work

Intellectual Outputs:

The developmed materials will target the different recipients – the young people, practitioners/youth workers and employers. In the frame of the project the following outcomes will be developed:

  • A Youth and Employer Advisory Boards Methodology which is a full outline of how to engage young people and relevant stakeholders in tool development (IO1)
  • Employability Competencies Training Modules which is a full suite of employability training modules (IO2)
  • An Employability Competencies Train the Trainer Course which is in a comprehensive master training course for the YEC employability competences (IO3)
  • A Competency Validation Guide in which the YEC tools will be mapped onto European and National frameworks, resulting in any young person who partakes in the training course having validated skills after completion (IO4).

A participative approach will be used when developing those outcomes in order to include the different groups’ perspectives and encourage them to be involved.

What are the activities within the YEC project?

In the course of the project advisory boards will be in place. Those will be in Dublin, Turku, Rome and Krakow. A key feature of these advisory boards will be to provide a platform to young people to engage with the project partnership and local employers to address what they feel are their training needs in lifelong employment competencies. The inclusion of employer advisory boards acts to address two key issues: 1) Allowing an exchange of learning and insight between young people and employers, and 2) Providing employers an opportunity to express the gaps they are witnessing in young people’s employability skills.

At a multiplier event in each city the advisory boards will moreover get to know the Employability Competencies Training Modules. In the frame of the piloting activities a full train the trainer course will be carried out by Ciofs-fp for 3 youth workers/practitioners from each of the four partners with advisory groups (IRE, FIN, ITA, PL). Each partner with trained practitioners will then pilot the full training course with 15 young people, 5 per practitioner.

On a final conference in Berlin, the project’s outcomes and achieving will be presented to an interested audience.

Beyond this, during regular transnational partner meetings, the project partnership will discuss the status, plan next steps and exchange experiences from the different countries as well as the results of the accompanying monitoring and evaluation.

Visit the YEC homepage