First year report of activity project “Enhancing Competences to Meet Young's NEETs Needs - ECMYNS” – Erasmus + by Lynx territorio sociale (may 2015 – may 2016)

First year report of activity project “Enhancing Competences to Meet Young's NEETs Needs - ECMYNS” – Erasmus + by Lynx territorio sociale (may 2015 – may 2016)

1.    Name of organization:

Lynx territorio sociale (for - profit organization – social research, Project Management, Human Resource Consultancy, Monitoring and evaluation of funded projects)

2. Assumed  tasks in ECMYNN project

Lynx territorio sociale coordinated the research activity and edited the reports indicated abowe

Social Research analysing NEETs needs in Italy, Spain, Greece, Poland and Romania (intellectual output 2 – IO2)

Report on existing services within organisations involved and European best practices applicable to NEET methodology -(intellectual output 3 - IO3)

3.Objectives /scope of the activities

Social research activities are useful for generating an overview of  NEET phenomenon is the  territories of the 5 partner countries

Research activities will furnish a needs analysis related to NEET status, revealing  perspectives, motivations, attitude and lifestyles of the target, as well as remaining need for local of local offices facilitating access to the Labour Market

The identification of best practices that directly or indirectly involve the project partners, as well as the application of these in their own territories, by other organization, both public and private

4.Activities (list intellectual output 2 – IO2)

Study of the source

Design and research strategy

Definition of research panel

Field research

Field validation of results

Data acquisition and analysis by partners

Final research report IO2

5.Activities (list intellectual output 3 – IO3)

Survey of best practice, tool and methodologies adopted

Recognition practice and service in use for NEET’s for each countrys

Identified good practice

Final report

Design of training actitivies

6. Description of each activity indicated in Items 4 and 5 , the group/groups targeted, results , impact on the target group

IO2 – A transnational overview of NEETs issues –

Originally, reasearch would turn to 18-24 years old neets. Due to EUROSTAT Neet definition and after a briefing with all partners during the first transnational meeting, it was planned to extend research to 18-29 years old Neets.

As a first step of IO2 research, the researcher from Lynx Territorio sociale, shared with all the partners an excel grid to collect all the requested data, useful to build up the context of the research and to have a first recognition on unemployed and NEET’s numbers in each of the partner countries.

After the collection of quantitative data, Lynx shared with partners a sort of free text form to be filled in order to deepen: context analysys at national, regional and local level; legislation on unemployment issue and NEET condition at all territorial levels; Policy addresses in matter of unemployment and specifically NEET condition, with a particular regard on national degree of Youth Guarantee policy’s implementation; a first overview (with a low degree of specification) of Good Practices in matter of NEET condition developed in each of the partner Countries.

Once the collection of quantitative and informative materials were collected, Lynx territorio sociale started to manage the qualitative collection, in order to deepen the main NEETs’needs directly by the target.

Especially, to better structuring the planned Survey aimed at NEETs, Lynx Territorio Sociale togheter with all involved partners prepared a sort of checklist to be shared with all researchers from each partner Countries, in order to manage a face to face interview cycle aimed to a panel of n°10 NEETs for each Country. The face to face interview cycle was managed by the snowball sampling approach, as well as the NEETs was reached directly in their own meeting places (pub, bar, squares, etc.) and, in some cases, dated by social networks.

The last step of IO2 was the managing of a WEB SURVEY that Lynx Territorio Sociale structured mainly on the basis of the most relevant outputs of face to face interviews. As task to carry out this step, lynx prepared the contents of questionnaire, after sharing with partners that proceeded to translate it in each of their own national languages, and upload all domestic questionnaires on the Google Drive tool.

The questionnaires links were spreaded into all the national contextes of ECMYNN partners, thanks to contributions of interested stakeholders (such as public and private agencies for youngsters and unemployed people) that partners took care to contact for dissemination of them.

Especially, the WEB survey on the NEET target aimed to get a structured and meaningful representation of the rationale and the practical difficulties concerning the NEET condition, as well as the critical issues concernig the systems for facilitating access to the labor market and the needs related to the overcoming of such social status.

Overall, nr 1655 youth people were reached. Between them 826 was NEETs, coming from the Partner’s Countries.  

Concerning the Web Survey, the main gathered evidences of NEETs ‘ condition was:

·         Medium/high level of education

·         Over 1 year unemployment

·         Confidence in school and education

·         A lot of reached NEETs were unactive, at the same time they are looking for a job and immediately available to work. 

·         No economical indipendence; support from parents. 

·         In Italy there is a lack of confidence compared to training courses, the vision is quite positive in the other Countries. 

·         In all the contextes, NEETs could not plan a professional project.  

·         Work is seen as a tool for economical indipendence and self realization

·         PEAs are not so effective and they don’t support well the NEETs in the job search. They would like to get from them effective services such as alert, customized projects, strengthening of training activities. 

·         NEETs are generally reluctant to start up companies, due to high taxes and the lack of capital. They prefer imagine themselves as employees rather than freelance or entrepreneurs. They ask for safety

·         The future is positive, NEETs perceive their condition as just temporary.

Compared to preliminary interviews carried out to a sample of 10 NEETs before starting the web survey, the following points were confirmed:

·         Generally, NEETs have got a worried and, in some cases, unhappy mood 

·         NEETs use the WEB and especially the social networks as favourite places for their interaction and participation in community interests, as well as for the job search.

·         The school is not able to give a real support to the job search, and it is not able to transfer knowledge to be simply spent in the labour market.

·         Compared to “external world” youth feel like a sense of abandonment  and discouragement.

                                                               

Based on the knowledge gained through the survey, the partners got the groundwork for setting up a "right approach" to the planned training activities directed to "operators" target, which concerns the next phase of the project. Especially emergerd as follows:

Ø  The Neet condition is very emotionally connoted and the operators’approach must follow this direction;

Ø  Training activities should be enhanced, giving more value to skills and soft skills to be concretely spent in the labour market;

Ø  Customized professional projects support must be strenghthen, to mitigate the NEETs’ sense of abandonement;

NEETs must to learn how to use correctly the WEB for the job search

As relevant impact concerning the IO2 work, it can be underlined as follows:

·         For what concerns ECMYNN partners: both quantitative and qualitative data collection work, gave to Ecmynn partners an example of managing the Neet issue starting from research activity, furnishing them useful tools to be replyed in the future. 

·         For what concerns reached NEETs: the invitation to fill the questionnaire would contiribute to make them feel “important”. The acknowledgment of their conditions could represent for NEETs a sort of hope, the awareness that someone noticed them. The good level of response given, considering the difficulties to reach this particular target, highlights that.

  

IO3 - Report on existing services within organisations involved and on the adoptable elements for NEETs

IO3 was been a preparatory step to II Transnational meetin learning activities, addressed to social workers from each of partners, called to operate to support NEETs through the planned innovative services.

Lynx Territorio Sociale prepared the structure of the Report, sharing it with the greek partner (ATOM). On this base, Lynx sent to all partners a format to be filled in order to furnish informations and feedbacks concerning:

·         experience of services related to neet’s in which ecmynn organizations are involved directly

·         experience of other best practices related to neet’s in ecmynn territories   

·         useful contributions from ecmynn partners to project the training workshop in patras

Once Lynx Territorio sociale researchers collected this informations, they proceeded to analyze them to write contents into the report and to give a first recognition of possible common models to be developed during the II Transnational Meeting. in Greece.

On the basis of what emerged from the collected data, ATOM designed the structure of learning activities to be done during the greek workshops, underlining the general approach, learning methods, themes to be deepened and methodologies for evaluation of learning activities.

 The results of IO3 were shown to all partners during the II Transnational Meeting and they were used to deepenin’ the problems and the possible solutions to face the NEET issues, concerning the manage of innovative service aimed to this target, starting from the direct experiences of partners. The problems-solutions dynamic, allowed to all partners the identification of specific innovative service to face the NEETs issues to be adopted in each of their domestic contextes.

The main impact of IO3 was to give to all partners the opportunity to compare their experiences of NEETs service management with others from the other ECMYNN partners. This generate a sort of “mindedness” that facilitated the identification of innovative activities to be implemented by the whole partnership.