Youth Empowering Peers!

<< Background >>YEP! was born out of the desire to counter the marginalization experienced by NEET youth, focusing on education, employment, and entrepreneurship to promote their inclusion and participation. The project was designed to address the main critical issues encountered in the implementation of active labour market policies: the difficulty for the institutions to reach and engage NEETs from the most vulnerable social groups; the inadequacy of staff in employment centers, who are often too old and underqualified to work effectively with young people; the structural impossibility of placing the workforce in contexts like Agrigento, characterized by a scarcity of small-sized businesses; and the absence of accessible support networks for aspiring entrepreneurs that could provide them with consulting and assistance services.<< Objectives >>General Objective: To promote youth entrepreneurship and employment as a mean of inclusion of NEETs at risk ofmarginalisation.Specific Objectives:1. To increase the capacity of partner organisations to promote youth entrepreneurship and employment.2. Facilitate the reactivation of low-skilled NEETs.3. Develop NEETs' entrepreneurial skills.4. Strengthen and expand the partnership to scale the project.<< Implementation >>The activity plan of YEP! included:1. Project management.2. Study of active labour market policy measures and incentives for youth entrepreneurship and socio-economic analysis of the territories involved in the project.3. Customised reactivation paths (engagement, orientation and accompaniment).4. Customised entrepreneurial empowerment paths.5. Sharing and use of project results.<< Results >>Results achieved:1. Improved the knowledge that partners have of their socio-economic contexts, of active labor market policies measures and of incentives for youth entrepreneurship.2. Low-skilled and under-qualified NEETs successfully included in a reactivation path.3. NEETs trained in an entrepreneurial key and assisted in the development of their business project.4. Created inclusion and support networks for NEETs.5. Strengthened and expanded the transnational partnership for the project's scale-up.Output:1. Report on active labour market policies and economic-social analysis of the territories of Agrigento and Brussels.2. Booklet of reactivation paths.3. Booklet of entrepreneurial empowerment paths.