The Youth Employment issue became very significant in 2008-2009 in a consequence of young people in Europe were disproportionately affected by the Global Financial Crisis. With over 5 million people under the age of 25 were unemployed in the EU27 by 2010. As youth employment has been a strategic priority for the European Youth Forum with their Member Organisations decided to work on the issue.

Youth Employment Action (YEA) project was established in September 2009 by a transnational consortium of European Youth Forum Member Organisations in order to: improve the position of young people in Europe with regards to their access to the labour market, enhancing their employability, and making them aware of their working rights.

The European Students’ Forum- AEGEE as the organization which has gathered significant experience in the field of formal and non-formal education has launched the Youth UnEmployment (YuE) project under the framework of the YEA, in order to increase youth employability by:

  1. Increasing the recognition of voluntary work as work experience.
  2. Increasing the recognition of Non-Formal education as an important skill at work.
  3. Empowering young people to effectively use their skills and preferences to get into employment.
  4. Empowering young people to set up enterprises.
  5. Raising awareness about employment opportunities.

Nowadays students often have to face a trade-off between their academic and non-academic commitments. As active citizens they contribute to the society working as volunteers and being involved in workshops following the foundation of non-formal education. Unfortunately this work often remains unrecognized by their University and the future employer. The Youth UnEmployment project wants to tackle these problems with implementing a series of activities.

First action of Youth UnEmployment Project was survey available on the Internet form the middle of September till the end of October 2010. The purpose of the survey was to collect information about young people’s knowledge of youth unemployment, experience and awareness of the topic, as well as on youth entrepreneurship. Over 600 young people from different European counties have responded. The results are going to be published in January 2011.

The Youth UnEmployment team is currently in the process of organizing events in Europe under the name of European Action Day (EAD). The goal of this action is to increase recognition of non formal education and voluntary work as working experience by enhances skills and awareness of youngsters in 4 main areas: self-employment (entrepreneurship), social media as a tool to earn money and find a job, definition of voluntary work and its value for volunteer, things young person should know about getting a job. Twelve AEGEE antennae are going to organize in the turn of January and February 2011 1-3 days events which consist of workshops, lectures, debates on the chosen topic. Organized activities will be open for all students and interested people. EAD events are going to take place in: Sofia, Tirana, Gdansk, Istanbul, Yerevan, Moscow, Barcelona, Lublin, Tbilisi, Skopje, Riga, and Izmir. Specific topics of these events you can find on our website http://www.aegee.org/yue.

The Youth UnEmployment Project is directed to students or young people at the turning point of their life from the students’ world to the professional one. For many of them this is a very difficult period. The European School of Entrepreneurship (ESE), another action in Youth UnEmployment Project, aims at empowering all those people to set up their own enterprises. We strongly believe that the European School of Entrepreneurship will change life of the participants and will influence their regions in a small but positive way. ESE is planned for spring 2011.

These actions which have been mentioned above are not everything the Youth UnEmployment Project team wants to realize. We have more actions designed, but for now there are in the planning process. If you would like to be updated please follow us on Facebook and check our website.

We are open for cooperation in many ways, at the level of sponsorship, and partnership.

If you have any questions or offer don’t hesitate to ask us at yue@aegee.org or personally to project manager, Magdalena Pawlowska. Visit also our website: http://www.aegee.org/yue

Contact information:

Magdalena Pawlowska
Project Manager

Youth UnEmployment AEGEE-Europe
E-Mail: magdalena.pawlowska@aegee.org
Mobile: 0048 668 404 401