Entrepreneurship
and Employment

ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND EMPLOYMENT

Many young people in the EaP countries continue to experience difficulties in the labour market, resulting in persistently high levels of youth unemployment across the region. Skills mismatch, coupled with a lack of effective career guidance and support from local employment services, often lead young people to seek opportunities elsewhere. This may undermine the potential for innovation and development within their communities.

Against this backdrop, all eight projects launched under the ‘EU4Youth: Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship’ grant scheme have the objective to improve career development and employment opportunities. The task is to strengthen entrepreneurial competences among youth, especially in the areas of green and digital skills.

The projects will place a strong emphasis on both technical and financial assistance, guiding young people in the Eastern Partnership countries through the process of starting up an enterprise. This work also includes providing the necessary funds and support to open and sustain their business.

Mentorship enabled through the programme was listed by the survey respondents as crucial support.

Out of 221 EU4Youth programme beneficiaries trying to open their business over the last five years, 44% were able to do so. Targeted advice and mentorship enabled through the programme were listed by the survey respondents as crucial support that helped beneficiaries in this process.

The majority of the beneficiaries (86%) stated that the support received through the EU4Youth programme had helped them to increase their confidence in opening their own business. Out of those that were unable to use their skills to start a business, more than half (53%) stated a lack of funding as the main barrier35. Disadvantaged beneficiaries faced more difficulties in opening their business.

To drive systematic changes at national and local levels, the EU4Youth programme combines youth work with larger policy processes and institutional capacity building.

Financed by the European Union and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania, and implemented by the Central Project Management Agency (CPMA), the ‘EU4Youth: Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship’ project focuses on providing technical assistance to governmental and non- governmental organisations involved in addressing youth employment and entrepreneurship.

In 2023, the project focused on enabling national governments to develop better policy frameworks, introducing youth guarantee-type measures, strengthening cooperation with Public Employment Services (PES), and fostering the creation of a positive business environment.

Focus on social entrepreneurship

Highlighting the potential of young people to drive change and foster economic growth in their countries, the EU4Youth programme aims to raise awareness of social entrepreneurship by supporting youth to come up with innovative solutions to social problems. Equipping young people with the skills, resources and support needed to create and operate social enterprises, the programme thereby aims to generate a process in which young people not only learn to develop their own careers, but also create value for their communities.

Having started their work in late 2023, the eight EU4Youth projects will offer a wide range of career and business development opportunities across all Eastern Partnership countries over the next two years. They are building on existing resources, infrastructure, and experiences of previous EU4Youth projects in the region.

Creating synergies among actions across different countries, eight projects foresee activities in Georgia, six in Ukraine, five in Moldova, and four in Armenia. Due to the technical and legal circumstances and political challenges, there are fewer activities foreseen in Azerbaijan (two projects) and Belarus (one project).

Activities will include mentorship and training programmes on entrepreneurial competences, hackathons, social entrepreneurship incubators and accelerators, technical assistance for social enterprises, as well as freely available tools and resources for both students and mentors. Many projects moreover plan to integrate the development of entrepreneurial skills into the actual process of building a social enterprise, seamlessly merging education, work, and civic engagement.

Making use of both formal and informal educational resources and settings, competence development will be incorporated in school curricula and training programmes but will also extend to non-formal learning contexts such as youth organisations and extra-curricular activities.

Blended entrepreneurship education

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For example, fostering youth social entrepreneurship and practical career management skills in Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, and Armenia through the innovative Social Student Companies (SSC) approach, the grant project led by Childfund Germany will provide support to 24 schools to allow students to put their social start-up ideas into practice.

The project merges students’ social entrepreneurship education with the practical experience of developing and implementing their own SSC, helping them to creatively address local challenges with the assistance of a teacher, entrepreneur, or parent. Through this initiative, schools become local hubs for social entrepreneurial activity where young people learn to identify local resources, generate income, and become changemakers in their community.

Other projects such as the ‘SKYE Net - Skills and Knowledge for Youth Empowerment Network’ implemented by World Vision in Armenia, Georgia, and Moldova, provide social entrepreneurship support in two stages: an initial entrepreneurship training programme focused on design thinking will help young people to transform their innovative ideas into social business models, after which an acceleration programme will allow a selection of aspiring young entrepreneurs to start-up and scale their businesses.

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Through an idea pitching competition, 30 innovative, feasible and sustainable social business models will be selected to receive funding and additional coaching, as well as technical and legal support to implement their social enterprises.

Similarly, the ‘Strengthening Cross-sectoral Cooperation for Youth Entrepreneurship Education in the South Caucasus’ project will introduce its blended youth entrepreneurship education programme (EEP) in the form of a learning challenge, in which aspiring young entrepreneurs gradually proceed to the next stage, improving and developing their competencies and business ideas throughout the different stages, including bootcamps and national and regional Ideathons. The participants will be accompanied by mentors from the private sector, which will provide a coaching and support network for the young entrepreneurs.

Increasing institutional capacity for career support service

Education, skills training and mentorship programmes are critical to help young people launch their career and develop the entrepreneurial mindset and specific skills needed for starting and growing a business.

However, employment and entrepreneurship can only flourish in an environment that provides continuous support and opportunities for young people. In addition to competence development activities targeted at youth, projects also focus on institutional capacity building for employment and entrepreneurship support.

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Recognising that many employment services and youth organisations in the EaP countries currently cannot provide appropriate career counselling and guidance to young people due to insufficient knowledge of the digital labour market and a lack of technical and financial resources, the project coordinated by Caritas Czech Republic will place a strong focus on upskilling competences for professionals working with youth.

Career advisers in Georgia, Armenia and Moldova will be supported to enhance their knowledge in the digital professions and related market-driven skills and use of digital technology to deliver career development services more effectively. Moreover, CSO-based advisers will be supported with financial and technical resources to better mobilise disadvantaged youths and persons who are not in education, employment, or training (NEETs).

Sustained support for sustainable change

To guarantee the sustainability of their actions, these EU4Youth projects will aim to build an ecosystem for entrepreneurship that will be able to sustain itself beyond the project framework. In doing so, many projects plan on seeking multi-stakeholder cooperation between businesses, educational institutions, governmental agencies, youth organisations and other local CSO to create long-term support structures for quality entrepreneurship education, financing, and technical assistance.

The need for support does not stop with the creation of a new business. Continuous financial and technical assistance as foreseen in many of the EU4Youth grant projects can help to accelerate and further improve young entrepreneurs’ business operations.

The effects of continuous support to entrepreneurs are evident: according to the latest EU4Youth end-beneficiary survey, 71% of respondents stated that their new business is still running after one year. This shows an increase from previous years, highlighting the benefits of sustained support and a functioning eco-system for entrepreneurs.

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Multi-stakeholder partnerships for entrepreneurship

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Forging partnerships for entrepreneurship support the ‘Greenhouse for Social Innovators project’ implemented by IBB Germany. It focuses on assisting young entrepreneurs to develop sustainable green and digital social business models by establishing lasting cooperation between young social startups and private business companies. The project also works with refugees and businesses that were forced to relocate from Belarus and Ukraine. The main instrument is to connect entrepreneurs with potential investors that may provide them with further funding and technical assistance or include them in their CSR-strategies or production chains.

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The ‘SEEDS - Social Entrepreneurship and Enhanced Development-based Skills’ project implemented by the Danish Refugee Council also seeks to enhance entrepreneurial and career management opportunities for disadvantaged youth through the establishment of innovative incubators with the private sector in Georgia and Ukraine.

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The ‘Strengthening cross-sectoral cooperation for youth entrepreneurship education in the South Caucasus’ project will form wide private-public partnerships. The focus is on designing and implementing municipal action plans that set out clear steps to increase the local support infrastructure for young people’s entrepreneurial competencies and career development.

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The project will invite all stakeholders committed to youth entrepreneurship and employment in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia to participate in these partnerships, including municipal youth departments, youth groups, NGOs, councils, formal and non-formal education and qualification institutions, as well as representatives of local businesses.

Finally, the ‘Building Back Better Through Social Entrepreneurship’ project implemented by JA Europe will moreover implement a revolving philanthropic sustainable financing model and fundraising mechanism in which the initially created companies will be provided with seed- funding using the model of “Pay it Forward”.

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This work aims to create a community of giving: successful social entrepreneurs will have a non-binding option to give 1% non-dilutable shares from the newly-formed entities. This donation serves as a basis to catalyse further capital for the financing of a new group of youth, thus making the model circular and sustainable over time.

Youth employment partnerships

Complementing activities directly involving youth with larger policy and capacity building support for youth employment, the EU4Youth programme continued enhancing cross-sectoral cooperation and strengthening stakeholders’ capacity for evidence-based policy design.

In 2023, the EU4Youth programme engaged nearly 140 different stakeholders from government, administrations, CSOs, and the private sector in youth employment partnerships to promote joint approaches to youth employment.

The Youth Guarantee (YG) is a commitment by all EU Member States to ensure that young people under the age of 30 receive a good quality offer of employment, continued education, apprenticeship, or traineeship within a period of four months of becoming unemployed or leaving education. The YG scheme aims to ensure young people’s smooth transition from school to work, support their labour market integration and make sure that no one is left behind.

With its overall successful implementation across the EU, the YG offers a compelling example of meaningful and mutually beneficial cooperation and partnerships among relevant stakeholders engaged in youth employment. This includes state entities like public employment agencies and municipalities, as well as private sector partners who provide traineeships, apprenticeships, or other.

Promoting the YG framework as a viable policy solution to tackle youth unemployment in the EaP countries, the EU4Youth programme is piloting Youth Guarantee type initiatives in Moldova and Georgia. Bringing together youth employment stakeholders from both countries, the ‘EU4Youth: Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship’ project facilitated the elaboration of a roadmap to implement YG measures in the territories of Abasha (Georgia), Chisinau (Moldova), and Poti (Georgia), focusing on mapping, tracking and outreach to persons who are not in education, employment, or training (NEETs), and developing guidelines for establishing a co-management structure. The roadmaps were approved at the National Steering Committees in both countries at the end of 2023.

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In September 2023, the ‘EU4Youth: Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship’ project invited representatives of public employment services from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine to Lithuania to introduce them to Youth Guarantee (YG) measures.

The study visit aimed to provide insights into the design, planning, execution, and subsequent assessment of YG measures, highlighting best practice and lessons learned across different EU Member States. Meetings with the Ministry of Social Security and Labour in Lithuania moreover touched upon legal issues of YG measures, focusing on the drafting and implementation of relevant laws and regulations, and the allocation of financial and human resources.

Since in EU member states public employment services (PES) play a major role in the implementation of youth employment measures, the participants also visited the Lithuanian PES to learn more about youth employment services such as vocational guidance, skills assessment, and career planning. Private sector representatives were also invited to discuss successful collaboration formats between PES and Lithuanian enterprises in employing young people or providing them with a traineeship or apprenticeship in the green and digital sectors.

Knowledge sharing on policies, legislation, and fair work standards

In the area of employment and entrepreneurship, the EU4Youth programme focuses on disseminating best practices and lessons learned among policymakers, public institutions, and private sector stakeholders. At the same time, it ensures that young people are aware of existing legislation and policies and may exercise their right to fair employment and decent work standards.

Youth Wikis

In 2023, the ‘EU4Youth Coordination and Policy Support’ (CPS) team published new Youth Wiki country reports on Armenia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine to support policymaking on youth employment in the region. These reports cover specific topics such as skills forecasting, career guidance and counselling, traineeships and apprenticeships, cross-border mobility employment, entrepreneurship, and vocational opportunities, as well as the development of entrepreneurial competences, and the promotion of entrepreneurship culture in the EaP region.

The reports show that the five countries are actively working towards enhanced youth employment and entrepreneurship, focusing on initiatives such as start-up incubators and vocational education and training (VET) programmes.

However, the data also identifies the persistent mismatch between education systems and labour market demands as a common barrier in the region, impeding young people from entering quality employment. To address this challenge, the reports highlight the promotion of entrepreneurship and the leveraging of international best practices in youth employment policies as promising measures.

Telegram game

The violation of labour rights and fair work standards by employers is a common issue observed in many EaP countries. This is particularly valid for young people who may be just starting their careers and are not fully aware of their legal rights or feel unable to assert them, leading to a need for greater awareness and advocacy in this area.

As parts of its efforts to better inform young people about their rights, and to promote good employment practices amongst stakeholders in the region, the ‘EU4Youth: Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship’ project launched the Telegram chat-bot game, @fairemployment in 2023. The interactive game is designed to raise awareness and understanding of fair employment practices among young individuals and employers in Moldova and Georgia. It guides players through workplace scenarios as either an employer or an employee, evaluating their knowledge of fair labour standards in a four-stage simulation. The game also identifies potential violations of workers’ rights and highlights risk areas for employers. The game is available on the Telegram app in Romanian and Georgian.