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Description
The project addresses the challenges of NEETs at age 18-29 living in rural areas and struggling to find a suitable job. NEETs are split to two target groups: one with secondary school diploma and interest in entrepreneurship, the other without diploma seeking trainings to get skilled job. Focusing on innovation and technology in the agricultural sector, we support significant number of young people from Bulgaria, Romania, Spain, Italy, Hungary and Slovenia by offering them a set of toolkit including trainings, start-up competition, staff exchange, coaching and mentoring services helping their employability in agricultural segment either as skilled employee or entrepreneur.
During the project lifetime, we aim to achieve the following goals:
- 300+ NEETs attending “Agro-professional” trainings;
- 900+ NEETs attending “Soft-skills” trainings;
- ICT Collaborative Platform operating;
- 18 best performing trained NEETs taking part in 3-5 days international mobility actions;
- 30 NEETs attending 1-3 month mobility actions at national agricultural holdings;
- 20 stakeholders attending study visits to improve their activities and influence policy making;
- 45 NEETs in the process of starting their own businesses;
- 200 jobs created.
Our approach is fundamentally conceived to be extended, replicable to support new participants, young people in gaining needed skills on their way to employment or starting own entrepreneurial challenge. Designed to diminish skill shortage of young people living in rural areas and to boost their entrepreneurship to increase the employment in agriculture, the project creates a network of major players of the innovation system and leads to strengthening the agro-innovation-related competences of NEETs.
Summary of project results
Youth unemployment in many rural areas of Europe is high, and many young people who have dropped out of school are low-skilled and have difficulties getting a job. The eNEET Rural project addressed the challenges of NEETs ages 18-29 living in rural areas and struggling to find suitable jobs. Focusing on innovation and technology in the agricultural sector, the project supported a significant number of young people from Bulgaria, Romania, Spain, Italy, Hungary and Slovenia by offering them a set of toolkits to improve their soft skills to find a job and to build their agro-professional skills to start own agro-business. In order to achieve this, the project proposed non-formal training and supporting activities, such as start-up competition, staff exchange, apprenticeship actions, coaching and mentoring services to help their employability in the agricultural segment either as skilled employees or entrepreneurs. The partners elaborated a set of tailored training materials, based on their previous experience and competence. The expertise partner from Norway created the ICT Collaborative Platform to support online training for NEETs and to establish connections between the national stakeholders. Also, a series of on-the-spot Soft-skills and Agro-professional training was successfully implemented in participating countries, involving 1.696 NEETs. 74 national stakeholders took part in the study visits to exchange experience and to start collaborating with other members of the network, 52 NEETs attended the international brokerage events and 30 NEETs were enrolled in apprenticeships at farms to practice on the place. Thanks to these transnational approaches and actions, the project contributed to the creation of more than 300 new jobs and 433 NEETs engaged in active job search, moreover, 54 NEETs are in the process of starting their businesses.
The project methodology was fundamentally conceived to be extended, and replicable to support new participants, and young people in gaining needed skills on their way to employment or starting own entrepreneurial challenge. Designed to diminish skill shortage of young people living in rural areas and to boost their entrepreneurship to increase the employment in agriculture, the project created a network of major players (agro-companies/associations, rural municipalities, training centers, universities and schools, etc.) of the innovation system and leads to strengthening the agro-innovation-related competences of NEETs.
Summary of bilateral results
Having a donor project partner from Norway, the eNEET Rural project benefitted valuable support from a professional company with long-term experience in e-learning programs for specific target groups such as migrants, disabled people, NEETs, etc. Inclusion AS, as Norway´s leading supplier of services within the area of entrepreneurship, innovation and job creation, contributed a lot to developing the main project output - the ICT Collaborative platform: www.eneet-elearning.eu (prepared by Inclusion AS, the project deliverable D3.3. presents in detail the applied methodology for implementing online training courses and recommendations provided by the project expertise partner). Constantly during the project, Inclusion AS offered professional advice in developing the content of the training materials, coordinated the training via the online platform, and attended all the partner’s meetings and transnational events by providing good practice examples, knowledge, specialized help, etc. As additional support to the consortium, the expertise partner organized twice per project duration the sharing experience seminars (not foreseen as project activities in the AF) for partners and mentors to provide them with additional skills for implementing the online training. Thanks to the bilateral partner, the rest of the consortium partners had the opportunity to visit Norway and to study in person the presented best practices in youth employment and to establish a reliable partnership with national stakeholders.The expertise partner facilitated the transfer of project results as they are the key partner to transfer the online training beyond the participating countries. The consortium partners plan to continue the established fruitful bilateral collaboration.