345 – A Place for Youth in Mediterranean EEA: Resilient and Sharing Economies for NEETs

Many of the Mediterranean EEA regions, in addition to youth unemployment, face insularity-related pressures and refugee crisis. That problem needs transnational cooperation in research and in empirically-grounded solutions based on innovation and know-how transfer. The YOUTHshare project aims at reducing youth unemployment in coastal and island regions of Mediterranean EEA by advancing young NEETs skills in trans-locally resilient agri-food production, in social and sharing economies and in IT and web-based tools. The direct target groups are inactive low-skilled women and refugees/ asylum seekers/ migrants between 25 and 29 years old. The end beneficiaries are regional-scale non-traditional actors, supporting youth employability. Boosting the potential of NEETs in those sectors is expected to reduce economic disparities in the target areas. The project will deliver a transnational Research Network and an Employment Centre with branches in four Mediterranean countries, leading to an informed institutional engagement for NEETs. Tailor-made analysis allows for special counselling to NEETs, training on niche sectors, job matching and work-based training on social entrepreneurship will enhance NEETs’ employability. Start-up empowerment supported by a sharing platform will further boost entrepreneurship. The project’s transnational approach that builds on path-dependent Mediterranean linkages will engraft the traditional cooperation with shared international experience, tools, best practices, social economy start-ups and platforms, leading to a transnational bottom-up, sharing-based upgrade of the NEETs’ skills with the purpose of enhancing their employability. In addition to the inference of best practices as a policies’ toolbox, the successful implementation and scalability of the project will be measured through anintegrated methodology of evaluation and replication of its main results.

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