10 Jul CREA RAISE Youth programme: conclusions and outcomes

The second edition of the CREA RAISE Youth programme has been one of the main activities of the RAISE Youth project in Extremadura for the year of 2023. This activity, that started on January 2023 and was officially launched to the public on March 2023 and, by making dissemination activities, such as attending to different events that the team of FUNDECYT-PCTEX knew will be attended by young NEETs and youth-related organizations and by using the network of stakeholders related to the RAISE Youth project, the team of the RAISE Youth project in Extremadura was able to engage young NEETs in the activities related to the CREA RAISE Youth programme.

This second edition has been comprised of three different stages: the first phase, related to the engagement of young NEETs from rural areas in Extremadura in the RAISE Youth project and activities and the creation of a entrepreneurial mindset by the celebration of different Social Service Jams that aimed to tackle the problems identified by young people in their vicinities by creating business ideas with a social approach; the second stage, that gave those NEETs that showed interest in the RAISE Youth activities and approach a more in-depth training in the form of an Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) available in CAPACYT, FUNDECYT’s online training platform; and the third and last phase that came in the form of individual one-to-one mentorships with the participants.

This activity, done together with Social&Tech, a women-lead consultancy agency specialized in the designing and implementation of training programmes, has had a meaningful impact on the social fabric of Extremadura. With this activity, the RAISE Youth project has reached NEETs in rural areas of the provinces of Cáceres and Badajoz, but it has also sparked the interest of public administrations and stakeholders. In this regard and thanks to the CREA RAISE Youth programme, the townhall of Pinofranqueado, a rural municipality of the province of Cáceres, organized an event with technicians and public servants that were interested in the RAISE Youth methodology that marked another milestone in the transfer of knowledge gathered by the whole consortium regarding social innovation and youth engagement.

As an overview of how youth, communities and social challenges were made the core of the CREA RAISE Youth workshops, one of the business initiatives that were created by the attendees and that tackled specific challenges in the workshop held in Navalmoral de la Mata, with a big Muslim community, one of the attendees wanted to create an on-line Muslim clothes shop to make the community less dependent on periodic travel to Muslim countries to fetch clothes and other supplies that are not available in Spain. This business initiative perfectly encapsulates the philosophy and methodology followed by the CREA RAISE Youth programme and show how positive business with a social and inclusive approach can be to their respective communities and from FUNDECYT-PCTEX we hope that more public agents and civil society will develop an interest in developing this kind of business to benefit communities all across Extremadura.