3rd-11th of April 2019
Wisla, Poland
Training Course
The training “Empowerment through (social)entrepreneurship” took place in Wisła (Poland) between 3th – 11th April 2019 . 21 youth workers from 7 countries attended the project: Cyprus, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Poland, Portugal.
Youth unemployment is still a significant challenge in the EU: – long-term youth unemployment is still at record highs, – the EU youth unemployment rate is more than double the overall unemployment rate. However, unemployment is not only about gloomy statistics and sad, depressing reality of many unemployed young people. Many people argue that it is also connected with the rise of Neo-Nazism in Europe and raising intolerance towards immigrants “who steal the job”. Young people that have been long-term unemployed, often feel a sense of alienation and have lower self-esteem. And it is a fertile ground for populist slogans that immigrants came to still our jobs, and to “cure” lower self-esteem by boosting ego with slogans about superiority of one’s own origin.
We believe that including Social Economy (SE) into non-formal education might be a solution. On the one hand, spreading knowledge about the Social Economy can be extremely useful in order to motivate young people in set up similar initiative by themselves (especially that all over Europe there are many successful examples of how SE helped in combating youth unemployment; unfortunately, in many countries and areas young people are simply not aware of such thing and opportunity). On the other hand, promotion of SE can influence attitudes of young people towards “others” (migrants, refugees who ‘steal’ a job) by showing them, that economy does not necessarily need to work on the win-lose scenario (“if you get a job, it means that I will not, so I am loosing something because of you”). Quite a contrary – thanks to Social Economy, economic initiatives can be a win-win scenario, where we all gain. Showing young people SE solutions will help them realise that immigrants, refugees or other
People, that they might currently blame for their unemployment, can in fact actively contribute to the development of their local community. This, in turn, will also contribute to the spread of tolerance.
Objectives:
- Gain and further develop knowledge regarding SE and opportunities it gives in combating youth unemployment as well as changing attitudes of young people by promoting important values, such as tolerance and solidarity;
- Become familiar with experience and lessons learnt (both of participants and organizations) regarding including non-formal education on Social Economy and promotion of entrepreneurship’
