RAY: Rural Active Youth Job Portal

"The initiative for “Rural Active Youth: RAY Job Portal” has come from the real need of young people in Bulgaria, Italy, Portugal and Slovenia to find appropriate jobs in their local environment, not far from where they live. The current economic and social conditions are still not friendly towards young job seekers. There is high unemployment rate among young people and many of those who have jobs face uncertainty, poor quality of employment and discrimination due to lack of work experience. The primary objective of the RAY project was to design, develop, deliver and test a new innovative Job Search Platform, which has already been working for several months as a meeting point between young job seekers and relevant employers from local rural areas. It helps match their needs through online tools. Young people can present their competences and skills, employers present their needs and expectations. The project promotes empowerment of young people also through a Cutting-edge Training on job search, which ensures that rural youth is equipped with necessary knowledge, skills and attitudes to successfully showcase their abilities to potential employers by using the Job Search Platform. The concepts of the RAY portal and the distance job search training are unique in all partner communities, where job search web sites do exist but their objectives and targets are different. RAY Job Search Platform serves rural areas and empowers young people there to showcase their skills and talents, so that both employers and job seekers can match and contribute to the economic development of their communities. The project targets young job seekers from the partners’ rural regions who face social, geographical and economic obstacles, youth NGOs, youth centers, youth councils, youth clubs, education and training providers. In addition, the project addresses employers (rural businesses - SMEs), whose businesses suffer from skills shortage, public employment services, chambers of commerce, associations of employers; development agencies; local policy and decision makers in the youth field. Two intellectual outputs have been created as initially planned: - Job Search Platform - jobs.rabotilnik.com - Cutting-edge Job Search Training for Youth (moodle e-learning course) in EN and in all partner languages - https://e-learning.rabotilnik.com/course/view.php?id=10Besides the two intellectual outputs some other results have been achieved: multiplier events in the partners' regions with much more participants than initially planned, in addition to a blended mobility of 17 disadvantaged young people between 19 and 30 years of age from 4 different countries supported by 4 youth workers, who regularly met virtually before and after a physical 5-day training in Mengeš, Slovenia. The mobility acted as an opportunity to receive regular feedback from the end-users in the process of creating the two intellectual outputs. The project results enhance the social inclusion of young people into the labor market and deepen the link between the rural employers and the job seekers in the rural committees of the partners. They provide rural disadvantaged youth with modern tools for successful job search. Long term effects: - new and better solution in the employment process in the partners' rural communities; - increase of employment of young people in the rural areas and reduction of the number of young unemployed; - prevention of ""brain drain"", depopulation and aging in the rural communities; - positive influence on the development of the local economies; - stronger trust and cooperation in the local environment for common goals."