Annual Growth Survey (AGS) from 2014 shows that the unemployment among young adults within the age 18 – 30 years is one of the main socioeconomic problems in the European Union since economic regression 2009. It reached 23.4 %-more than twice as high as the adult rate, with some 5.7 million young people affected. Young people that have only completed lower secondary education bear the highest risk of unemployment. In 2012, the EU average youth unemployment rate was 22.8 %, but reached 30.3 % for low-skilled youth.
Spanish figures are even more alarming with a youth unemployment rate close to 49%, although decreasing compared to previous years.
In Communication “Moving Youth to Employment” 2012, the Commission states that the main problem regarding youth employment is a weak school-to-work transition. This depends on 2 reasons: a) employers are not willing to invest in future workforce and are usually focusing on current needs of the company; b) there is a lack of cooperation/coordination between different stakeholders in the region working with education, counselling and employment of young adults. The above makes career counselling services ineffective and job placements are not adapted to individual education and capacity as well as to regional employment needs.
In daily services there are many organisations involved in the process of education, counselling and employment for young people: Adult Education, VET, municipalities, PES, NGOs, etc. All these organisations use their own methods for career counselling and job placements. Since there is no coordination between them, the same guidance services are provided to one person several times or good services are offered at wrong moments. Moreover, in most of EU countries there is lack of professional standard and training for the professionals in the area of career counselling.
The consequence is de-motivation and loss of self-esteem among young adults. At the system level the lack of cooperation leads to: a) mismanagement of public funds on repetitive measures, b) inability to track results and thereby possibility for evaluation of provided services; c) disappearance of young adults from public system such as municipal welfare or PES system into black market.
The accessibility of young adults to employment through engagement of the whole regional stakeholder networks (including employers) into guidance process in order to offer reality-based tailored learning/career opportunities to young adults is a prerequisite for the solution of the above challenges and IGMA3 project is ready to undertake.
The partnership of igma3 project has a long experience of working with integration of young adults to the labour market though education/career counselling. In 2011 five partners of this project started IGMA project (www.integrationagent.eu) for development of methodology for integration of immigrant into labour market through effective cooperation of regional stakeholder networks. In IGMA2 project the curriculum for training of regional networks was developed.
The innovative character of IGMA3 project is that the IGMA methodology will be further-developed and integrated into policy levels in the partner countries through:
1.- Adaptation of methodology to the needs of young adults and resources of the stakeholder networks working with this target group.
2.- Enrichment of the methodology with successful job placements strategies and know-how for changing the attitudes of the employers.
3.- Development of distance training course for stakeholder networks through Moodle system.
4.- Professionalization of adult education staff working with career counselling and job placement of young adults.
The project is target to:
Adult education organisations, counselling services, public organisations working with employment and employers/ employer associations.
Young adults aged 18-30 especially those who are long-term unemployed or represent disadvantaged groups having longer distance to the labour market (physically disabled, early school leavers, immigrant, low-skilled).
The impact of introduction of igma3 methodology in the regional stakeholder networks will lead to better opportunities for job placements of young adults based on their needs and capacities. Moreover, the cooperated efforts of stakeholder networks will result in transparency and efficiency on the system level in regards to career counselling and employment of young adults.
PROJECT FACTSHEET
Programme: Erasmus+ K2. Cooperation and Innovation for Good Practices
Action: Strategic Partnerships for adult education
Agreement nº: 2015-1-SE01-KA204-012244
Duration: 36 months.
Working language: English
Project Promoter
Folkuniversitetet stiftelsen kursverksamheten vid Uppsala Universitetet.- Uppsala (Sweden)
Partners
MMC Management Centre Ltd, Nicosia (Cyprus)
DIMITRA Education and Consulting, S.A., Larissa (Greece)
DOCUMENTA, Instituto Europeo de Estudios para la Formación y el Desarrollo, Santander (Spain)
REVALENTO. Van de Winkel Consultancy BV, Tilburg (The Netherlands)
ECWT, EuropeaCentre for Women and Technology (ECWT) Forening, Drammen (Norway)
UYOVR, Union of Youth Organizations of Vinnytsia region, Vinnytsia (Ukraine)
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication [communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
