20 Apr The RAISE Youth project and the European Year of Skills in Extremadura. Planning, efforts and outcomes

The year 2023 marks the European Year of Skills where the European Commission, together with the European Parliament, Member States, social partners, public and private employment services, chambers of commerce and industry, education and training providers, workers and companies aim to help companies and the private sector to address skills shortages in the European territories by promoting a mindset of reskilling and upskilling and by helping people to get the right skills for quality jobs.

This initiative’s philosophy is intimately related to the RAISE Youth approach. As stated in the project proposal, the aim of the RASIE Youth project is to contribute to providing decent and productive work for youth through social innovation in rural areas of the member of the consortium (Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania and Spain) by promoting the idea of entrepreneurship among young people in the territories, by finding what motivates them, what are their skills and by accompanying them in the creation of new business that follow the principles of sustainable and circular development.

Focusing on the work being done in the Extremadura, the main focus of the team of the Scientific and Technological Park of Extremadura has been the development of different network of collaboration between key stakeholders in the territories that work rural NEETs from all of the region, the launch of different trainings, including a brand new methodology that detail the processes of preincubation and incubation of business ideas, as well as how to manage the spaces to create the correct environment to foster the creation of innovative business and even how to celebrate different event that help the participant focus and address problems and difficulties in a collaborative way. In short, we can summarize the work done so far in Extremadura by the team of FUNDECYT-PCTEX as an effort to improve the capacity building of the whole region in the fields pertaining to the RAISE Youth project: agroecology, tourism and agritourism, digitalization and sustainable development.

During this year 2023, several efforts pertaining the training and development of skill and capacities of young NEETs in Extremadura has been made. With the launch of the second edition of the CREA RAISE Youth programme, a training and mentorship programme where specialists will accompany young NEETs in the process of ideating their business ideas, pilot them and give them technical training and help on issues they might find along the process of founding and consolidating their business. Also, as a mean of building on the capacity of digitalization, a pending subject in the region, FUNDECYT has also launched the RAISE Youth Digital Toolbox, a No-Code digital platform that hosts a wide variety of digital tools and resources that aim to help the users to develop their digital skills and have access to professional tools to improve their own business initiatives and ideas.

Going forward with the development of skills and competences, In the following months a new series of trainings will be launched to support young people that want or are currently working in the primary sector. These trainings fall under the framework building of agroecology capacities for young NEETs, as their main goal is to improve the skills of young people and incorporate sustainable innovation in agricultural and livestock activities, while offering the rural environment as a job opportunity and settlement for the young population, encouraging generational change in the primary sector and incorporating that sustainability component from an integral point of view.

To sum up, the European Year of Skills is an outstanding opportunity to start implementing activities that improve the skills and capacities of young people from all Member States. With careful planning and well invested effort, we can achieve great things and improve the lives and prospect of all young people in Europe and create a better Europe for them to live in.