Youth Workspace

The Youth Workspace project is a strategic cooperation project between Estonia, Lithuania and Turkey, bringing together the world of work and youth to find common ground for their activities through jointly created innovation. This common feature brings young people to the knowledge of flexible working methods, which are increasingly being introduced alongside traditional work arrangements (remote working, co-working centers, short work week, work time slots, etc.). NEETs and other young people with fewer opportunities are a target group for whom decent working practices could be a solution to being involved in society. The reason lies in the various obstacles that hinder them from the tradition of basic work (special needs, social and economic barriers, taking care for the family, etc.).Innovative new work environments can be a solution for young people to participate in new forms of work and entrepreneurship. Different collaborative solutions and innovative social change in the community are needed to create such new synergies. Youth workers working with young people must also be prepared to address these issues among young people and to support their integration into working life.To bring change, the project will include three study visits to participating countries, training on social innovation and change management. An e-guide will be developed to map and gather common knowledge, ideas and synergies, including recommendations for communities to develop synergies between youth and work and to work with each other. In addition, videos will be produced that bring new ways of working and their relevance to the public in order to increase communities' willingness to change. At the end of the project, there will be three dissemination events and a Hackathon, based on the information and conclusions gathered during the project and providing ideas for community innovation for the next steps. The project is important in international cooperation because working has crossed borders and the world of work in innovative approaches is further away than the space where the work takes place.The project is based on a design method that is divided into four phases - discover, define, develop and distribute. The discovery process will collect experiences and practices from each country, including study visits, identify commonalities at the definition stage, analyse development opportunities, generate ideas on how different working life models might fit young people, and in what contexts and how these issues should be brought to youth community. It will bring interesting innovative ideas to prepare young people for work and to collaborate with institutions practicing new ways of working or providing an environment for innovative work solutions.Study visits include 18 participants from each country, 6 participants from each country to training course, 3-5 workshops modules will be created to introduce new techniques to young people, an e-manual and videos, and at least 40 people participating in dissemination events per country. Project period: 1st September 2020 - 31th March 2022.