TEAC Conference Report Dec. 2015 | Page 10

Workshop on youth employability Moderated by Ian Clifford (YouRock, UK) and Dr. Mara Jakobsone (LIKTA, Latvia) Issue: How to help youth to get their first work experience and alternative e-skills for employment the policy agendas for youth employment • If governments don’t see their countries Digital Agenda as a policy priority, then youth employability and skills suffer. Conclusions and recommendations: 10 • For youth employability it is a challenge to get national and /or regional support from policy makers, in the form of funding or any other type of support. Funds are often being used inefficiently (e.g. Youth Guarantee). Civil society should be more involved in the implementation of programmes like the Youth Guarantee. • Policy makers are not very efficient at Speakers: Ilona Griniute (Telecentre Europe); Esther Subias (El Teb); Zagorka Prce Veseli (Centre of Technical Culture Rijeka) establishing links between employers and educators. This is where telecentres and NGOs can and should • Although government’s action is often missing, some NGOs believe that more proactivity on this issue is needed from both employers and civil society. This is an alternative to “waiting” for the governments to make the difference. • In terms of what telecentres and NGOs can do to boost youth employability, they are already providing innovative online tools, platforms with resources and even employer led training programmes. • Innovative approaches like the pairing of young immigrant IT guides with resident seniors from the host countries (project in Sweden), are Speakers: Tariq Nazari & Gunilla Lundberg (Enter Sweden); needed to provide a unique inter-generational Loreta Križinauskienė (Langas i Ateiti); Ekaterina Fedotova learning experience and a pathway to employment. (YouRock.Jobs) step in, as it happens in the FIT4jobs.eu pilot projects. • Telecentres can also get in touch with • Formal collaboration agreements teachers and support them to be more innovative are a good way to create links with the and borrow some aspects of non-formal training. governments and create trust and accountability. • It is important to be creative in attracting • Trainings for young people should young people to ICT careers, not only by always be employer approved so that the teaching the hard skills, but also things like 3D skills taught are updated and can be certified. orienting or robotics, which get their attention. • The topics of self-employment and entrepreneurship should always be on What did people say on Twitter?