Education and
Employability
Pairing learning and skills development with the active involvement and capacity building of national stakeholders, the EU4Youth programme seeks to create the necessary structures and conditions to assist young people’s transition into the labour market. Over the last years, interventions under the Education and Employability pillar of the programme have shown the importance of targeted competence development. Similarly, more work-based learning opportunities and the recognition of skills acquired through non-formal or informal learning can positively impact young people’s employability.
The European year of Skills in 2023 further highlighted the need to support young people in acquiring the right skills for quality jobs while also supporting public and private organisations in addressing skill shortages. In line with these objectives, the EU4Youth programme continued its efforts to enhance youth employability in the region.
With the focus on strengthening cooperation with institutional stakeholders, while reinforcing competence development activities, new grant projects were funded under the ‘EU4Youth: Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship’. In addition, the programme underpinned its commitment to train local youth educators and counsellors and offered young people hands-on experiences through scholarships, internships, and work-based learning.
Pairing learning and skills development with the active involvement and capacity building of national stakeholders, the EU4Youth programme seeks to create the necessary structures and conditions to assist young people’s transition into the labour market. Over the last years, interventions under the Education and Employability pillar of the programme have shown the importance of targeted competence development. Similarly, more work-based learning opportunities and the recognition of skills acquired through non-formal or informal learning can positively impact young people’s employability.
The European year of Skills in 2023 further highlighted the need to support young people in acquiring the right skills for quality jobs while also supporting public and private organisations in addressing skill shortages. In line with these objectives, the EU4Youth programme continued its efforts to enhance youth employability in the region.
With the focus on strengthening cooperation with institutional stakeholders, while reinforcing competence development activities, new grant projects were funded under the ‘EU4Youth: Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship’. In addition, the programme underpinned its commitment to train local youth educators and counsellors and offered young people hands-on experiences through scholarships, internships, and work-based learning.
Increased work preparedness
Young people in the EaP region have the potential to drive positive change, innovation, and economic growth in their countries. Yet many students struggle with the transition from school to work. This is also highlighted by the results of the annual EU4Youth survey, which shows a decrease in young beneficiaries’ confidence in finding a job over the years, passing from 88% of beneficiaries reporting an increased confidence, to 62% in the latest wave.
In order to improve young people’s work preparedness, the EU4Youth programme is implementing a range of competence-development activities aimed at upskilling young people for the digital and green transformations, while at the same time fostering the development of soft skills to increase their resilience to new challenges and changes throughout their careers and their readiness to adapt to new standards and evolving requirements of the world of work.
Education and Employability
Competence-development activities
The newly-launched grant projects co-founded by the European Union and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania, and implemented by the Central Project Management Agency (CPMA) under the ‘EU4Youth: Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship’ pillar have the common objective of increasing employability among youth, with a specific focus on promoting green and digital upskilling, as well as entrepreneurial competences.
While efforts in 2023 predominantly focused on laying the groundwork for the project interventions, activities targeting the competence development of young people in the region will be manifold in the upcoming year, ranging from workshops, seminars and trainings, to informal learning activities that promote hand-on learning and foster the development of cross-cutting soft skills.
Focusing on disadvantaged youth in Moldova and Ukraine, the Persp@ctive project implemented by OESB Austria will target the development of digital and entrepreneurial competences through counselling, training courses and self-assessment tools for young people, in order to help facilitate their entry into the labour market.
To overcome the lack of cooperation and coordination between stakeholders in the field of education and youth employment, the project will moreover establish dedicated ‘YourSkills’ networks in each country. This will help bring together national employment agencies, education and training providers, NGOs, public institutions, as well as private sectors.
The networks will encourage lasting partnerships for the competence development of young people, ensuring that skills will match the demand of the labour market, while at the same time allowing students to validate their skills and obtain formal certifications.
To support the digital upskilling and career management skills of disadvantaged youth in Armenia, Georgia, and Moldova, another grant project implemented by Caritas Czech Republic is strengthening the capacity of career advisers and civil society organisations. Reaching out to those with fewer education and employment opportunities, the project will make use of both formal and non-formal learning initiatives for career counselling and the development of digital skills.
As a result, at least 720 disadvantaged young people, including young persons with disabilities and persons who are not in education, employment, or training (NEETs), will be able to enhance their digital skills through improved career counselling and digital skills capacity- building trainings.
Competence frameworks and skills validation
With regard to skill development, the recognition and validation of acquired skills have been identified by the programme as important steps in promoting young people’s employability. Given the evolving needs of the labour market and the opportunities that non-formal and informal learning can provide for transversal skill development, it is important that institutions foster mechanisms that allow for the official recognition and validation of skills acquired outside of formal learning.
Applying and adapting existing European frameworks for skills assessment within its grant projects and technical assistance components, the EU4Youth programme is actively promoting efforts to provide young people with adequate tools and mechanisms to test and validate their skillsets.
In order to enable youth better to assess their entrepreneurial competences, the ‘EU4Youth: Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship’ project, with the assistance of the Ministry of Digital, has developed the Entrepreneurial Competence Framework for Youth, as well as the accompanying self-assessment tool EntreGram4Youth.
The Entrepreneurial Competence Framework for Youth is based on the European Entrepreneurship Competence Framework (EntreComp) which was developed by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) to help people acquire the necessary competences and resources to start their own enterprises.
Applying this framework to youth in Ukraine, the newly developed version describes the components of entrepreneurial competence in terms of knowledge, skills, and attitudes, while identifying appropriate tools for their assessment and development. Bridging the realms of education and employment, the framework is meant to serve as a benchmark for initiatives aiming to promote entrepreneurial learning, including curricula in formal education, or hands- on entrepreneurial experiences in informal settings.
Based on the Entrepreneurial Competence Framework for Youth, the self-assessment tool EntreGram4Youth was launched to help young entrepreneurs identify and bridge gaps in their skills and self-development. The tool is available in English and Ukrainian on the Diia. Education portal.
To further promote the framework and highlight the need to develop and recognise entrepreneurial competencies in the EaP countries, the ‘EU4Youth: Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship’ project is organising a regional online event on ‘Fostering Youth Entrepreneurship’. The event will bring together government officials, educational entities, NGOs, and private sector stakeholders, encouraging them to familiarise themselves with the EntreComp4Youth methodology and self-assessment tool, and to explore ways to apply them in their own countries and projects. The event will also discuss how the framework and tool can aid the official validation of skills and promote the recognition of transversal skills developed outside formal education.
Education and Employability
Increased capacity to deliver education and career guidance
In order to ensure systematic support to youth, interventions carried out as part of the grant projects and technical assistance components of the EU4Youth programme have to be sustainable, meaning that local actors need to be able to implement and maintain newly-introduced structures and actions beyond the project’s duration. This in turn requires the enhanced capacities of a range of local stakeholders, including formal, informal and non-formal education providers, youth organisations, including youth workers, and representatives of public institutions and employment services.
While competence-development activities provided within the EU4Youth framework seek to equip young people with the necessary skills and knowledge needed to succeed in the labour market, the programme also acknowledges the need to strengthen and further develop professional orientation and career guidance as well as mentoring mechanisms.
The training of youth education providers is a crucial first stage in many of the grant projects, with projects organising capacity-building workshops and training programmes for teachers, counsellors and youth workers to foster their ability to provide quality support services.
Many of the projects are currently in the process of developing tailored programmes and guidance materials for youth education providers to help them deliver training and career guidance for youth. This will ensure that local teachers, trainers, youth workers and counsellors will be able to continue supporting youth even after the project has ended. At the same time, it helps to train new colleagues, therefore supporting the sustainability of actions.
The SKYE Net project is currently in the process of training teachers, counsellors and business support organisations by providing them with teaching methodologies and techniques to integrate social entrepreneurship competence development activities into their curriculum and support services. The training is based on a handbook specifically developed for the project that highlights best international practices with special adaptation to local contexts, using country-based examples and case studies.
Other projects, such as the Building Back better through Social Entrepreneurship projector the Persp@ctive project have already completed the first rounds of capacity building trainings, enabling 50 youth education providers in Moldova and Ukraine to further support young people in acquiring relevant entrepreneurial, digital and career management skills.
Over the last years, the ‘EU4Youth: Youth Engagement Roadmaps’ project (YER), in close consultation and cooperation with the ‘EU4Youth: Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship’ project, has provided a series of capacity-building activities for public administrations, and in particular Public Employment Services (PES), in order to allow them to provide more effective and efficient services to young people in line with the job market’s evolving needs. In addition, the EU4Youth programme has been organising a series of intra-regional events and study visits to allow institutional stakeholders from EaP countries to exchange best practices with their EU counterparts and to learn more about successful youth employment initiatives at EU level.
Following the completion of the YER project in early 2023, the ‘EU4Youth: Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship’ project has continued to maintain and further establish effective cooperation mechanisms with key actors and institutions active in the fields of education and employment. In the context of youth employability, the project is working closely together with the European Network of Public Employment Services to allow their EaP counterparts to benefit from the Network’s knowhow and experience.
In 2023, the ‘EU4Youth: Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship’ produced policy recommendations related to education and employability, covering best practices in the fields of apprenticeships, working with persons who are not in education, employment, or training (NEETs); and entrepreneurship policies related to digital, green, and social businesses.
The ‘EU4Youth: Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship’ project has produced several podcast episodes in 2023 in Azerbaijani, Armenian and English, discussing the transition to work for young people and exploring best practices from EU member states in the fields of career guidance and education, skills assessment, mentoring, counselling, and job placement.
Education and Employability
Increased mobility and learning experiences
In order to allow young people in the EaP region to expand their horizons, gain new insights, and network with peers from other countries, the EU4Youth programme is actively promoting a range of mobility and learning opportunities through both its grant projects and scholarship offering. These experiences not only help young people to acquire new competences in specific areas, but also strengthen their soft skills, allowing them to enhance their employability and foster their resilience.
Mobility and exchange programmes with EU countries moreover help to strengthen ties between young people across the EU and EaP region, promoting mutual understanding and cooperation mechanisms that will be essential in supporting countries such as Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia in their EU accession process.
72% of beneficiaries that were able to do an internship as part of the support received through the EU4Youth programme, stated they had found a job following their participation in the programme.
(Source: EU4Youth end-beneficiary survey 2024)
In order to enable young students’ insights into the functioning of an established social company, the SSC project implemented by ChildFund Germany will sponsor a one-week
internship with an established social enterprise for 100 young people from Moldova, Armenia, Georgia and Ukraine. Students will be able to complete their internship within their own region or abroad, receiving mentorship sessions and support from social entrepreneurs and local partners to spark their interest in the topic and inspire them to start thinking about their own ideas for a social enterprise.
Another grant project, implemented by GYEEK Club in Hungary, focuses on cross-sectoral cooperation for youth entrepreneurship education in the South Caucasus, by developing and piloting a transnational internship programme that will offer disadvantaged youth from Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia practical work experience in companies in Hungary and Slovakia.
These internships would allow the young people to improve their entrepreneurial and transversal competencies through a 6-week placement with private sector partners, gaining hands-on experiences in the work of a successful start-up business.
Between 2021 and 2023, the ‘EU4Youth: Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship’ project has also awarded 39 scholarships for the College of Europe to students coming from all six EaP countries to increase their understanding of European politics and governance and foster inter-cultural exchange and mutual learning - according to the EU4Youth Bi-annual data collection, 2021-2023.
EU4Youth Scholarship recipients
2024/2025 20
2022/2024 15
2022/2023 14
2021/2022 10
The ten-month post-graduate programme in European Interdisciplinary Studies at the Campus in Natolin in Poland brings together young people from different backgrounds, encouraging them to think beyond boundaries and overcome existing preconceptions, in order to build bridges and become active changemakers in their countries.
Students following the programme focus on the internal and external dimensions of the EU, and on specific areas such as migration or the digital and green transition. In addition to the academic programme, scholarship recipients can also further improve their career prospects by attending professional development programmes, taking language courses, and participating in academic extracurricular activities and student-led initiatives.
Upon their graduation, they will have acquired both the knowledge and leadership competences that will allow them to become active citizens, engage in policymaking processes, and promote EU cooperation and integration efforts within their countries.
Highlighting how the scholarship can help young people from the EaP region to become future changemakers, Ianina Japalau from Moldova, a graduate of the 2022-2023 cohort, explained how she intends to put her newly acquired competences to use in her home country of Moldova:
“I wanted to push my limits and acquire more skills so that I could return to Moldova and add value to the European integration path of my young country – a country whose integration is now more important than ever, given the uncertainty in the international sphere.”
In 2023, fifteen young students from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, and Georgia graduated from the programme thanks to the scholarships provided by the EU4Youth programme. Applications for the new academic year 2024/25 closed in January 2024, with twenty EU4Youth scholarship recipients from the EaP region starting their studies in autumn.
Education and Employability