Youth Employability Competences
YEC, Youth Employability Competences, is an Erasmus + project and aims to help young people & youth workers identify key gaps in employability competences & address these through youth worker led training modules. The YEC team are committed to ensuring that young people, along with employers and youth workers, can play a really important role in making sure the training content developed in this project is youth friendly while also addressing the skills gaps that employers may be reporting.
about us
Youth Employment Compentences is a project developed by a team of motivated youth workers and practitioners from 6 countries in Europe: Ireland, the UK, Finland, Germany, Poland, and Italy. The partnership was drawn together to create a diverse range of partners who have an evidenced commitment to youth engagement, up-skilling & training of youth workers/practitioners and young people along with validation of these skills, as well as sharing and promotion of best practice in the area of youth work and employment.
Objectives
• Increase employability of young people
• Increase validation of young people’s employability competences
• Increase engagement of young people and employers in competency tool development
• Increase the focus on young people’s employability among young people and their practitioners.
The following actions form the main tasks within the project and involve, research, content development, engaging stakeholders and advisory boards, development of training programmes, piloting, external & internal monitoring & evaluation.
1. Develop & pilot a methodology which creates a space for dialogue between young people, employers and the project partnership when developing project tools
2. Creation of employability competencies training modules for young people, with particular focus on the personal, social and learning to learn competency from the Council of The European Union.
3. Creation of train the trainer course with specific focus on youth workers and guidance practitioners engaging with young people who are seeking employment
4. Creation of a guide for local youth workers and practitioners to map the modules from the train the trainer course, or any employability skills training, onto current validation systems under ET 2020.
Outputs
These actions will create results through the following Intellectual Outputs (IOs):
IO1: Youth & Employer Advisory Boards Methodology: a full outline of how to engage young people & relevant stakeholders in tool development will be produced. This will result in more organisation having the information they require to include young people in their programme development stage. This will increase the usefulness of tools developed for young people and increase the opportunities for youth empowerment.
IO2: Employability Competencies Training Modules: a full suite of employability training modules will be produced. These will be piloted with young people in Ireland, Poland, Italy and Finland, resulting in their increased employability. These modules will also enhance the skills of youth workers and practitioners who partake in piloting them.
IO3: Employability Competencies Train the Trainer Course: this IO will result in a comprehensive master training course for the YEC employability competences. This will result in a quality assured exploitation of the tools developed. This will also result in a sustainable rolling out of the YEC tools post project lifetime due to master trainers within the partnership committed to providing the training to youth workers who request it and meet the competency criteria set out.
IO4: Competency Validation Guide; YEC tools will be mapped onto European & National frameworks where they are applicable, resulting in any young person who partakes in the training course having validated skills after completion. This guide will also promote the use of validation methods within the field of youth work and increase the use of these scales among partner organisations and anyone who chooses to download the guide
project outcomes
We will have 5 transnational meetings to collaborate on the development of our outputs. The tools will all be piloted in our partner countries before they are finalised. We have a clear dissemination strategy in place to share our tools with youth practitioners and young people across all partner countries and more widely at European level. If the aims and objectives of the YEC project are met it is expected that there will be impacts on all participants mentioned, the partnership organisations and relevant stakeholders. The overall impact for these mentioned groups will be an increased awareness and knowledge of the importance of employability competences, training opportunities, methods for validation of these skills and the importance of engaging young people in tool development.
Contact us for more information
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Project Partners
Ballymun Job Centre (Ireland)
Rinova (United Kingdom)
Ciofs-fp (Italy)
Strim (Poland)
MetNet (Germany)
Turku (Finland)