Educational Innovation facing Youth Unemployment

"‘EiYoU - Educational Innovation facing Youth Unemployment’ lasted two years under the funding of the Erasmus+ programme of the EU. It was born from the great challenge of trying to give an answer to the emergency existing in a specific generation of young people regarding early school leaving and unemployment. As it was singled out in the preparation phase, the existence of a strict connection between lower expectations from the job world and the disbelieving in education led to the will of EiYoU! to try and empower students and teachers to cope with the negative impacts that youth unemployment has on learning and schooling and to change the perception that students have of education, looking at it as something that can contribute to a satisfactory professional life and that could favour a more strict connection with the labour market.The study that stood under the concrete development of EiYoU! revealed a serious condition and challenging situations about youth unemployment, also linked to the overall economic and political situation. The rates of ESL in the partner countries are: Italy and Turkey 17.6 % and 15%, and Portugal and Italy have NEETs rate of 23%.The project objective was to address specific needs and intervene on them with its actions at national and transnational level, as: motivating students to take over their future instead of being threatened by the actual conditions; delivering resilience competences to the generation most affected by the risk of unemployment and give them the tools to face their professional path in a positive and entrepreneurial way; giving schools new teaching and learning methods to encourage teachers and students. All this with the main general objective to reduce the early school leaving caused by demotivation and disbelieve in education. The EiYoU! project brought together 7 partner organisations that, thanks to their interdisciplinary character, contributed together to the proper achievement of the projects’ results. They represent various areas regarding education and all the issues linked to youth unemployment that EiYoU! aimed to address (the school sector, employment and counseling in training, youth).The partnership has produced research reports, implementation resources and a Catalogue of Educational Innovations containing the best innovative interventions developed and experimented during the project.A relevant part of the project activities was represented also by the workshops realized at national and transnational level (exchanges of students and teachers) where the bottom-up approach at the basis of the whole EiYoU! had its most evident expression. Pilot interventions were realized in all the concerned countries to put into practice the educational prototypes co-created by all teachers and crowdsourcing members.Worth of mention are also all the intangible results gained, e.g. the changed attitude towards school that many of the teachers and students demonstrated thanks to their active involvement in this project.They have acquired a positive mind set towards educational efforts, their motivation to participate in educational activities and the importance of personal and creative initiatives increased. Thanks to the pilot testing, the students showed an active engagement in the activities, greater autonomy and sense of responsibility and independence, development of their problem solving skills.They have acquired and understood how positive is to acquire competences that can help them during the life after school and in their professional orientation. Teachers will be empowered to change their model of teaching, by integrating new creative and meaningful learning activities. They will also ""learn"" on how to produce such innovation, by collaborating with others around them or within a global network (crowdsourcing). EiYoU! reported a concrete increased participation in the learning activities by the students and diffusion in schools of some alternative learning/teaching methods for encouraging teachers in their job and students in their learning path and in participating in school activities with a more positive and proactive approach.As a longer-term benefit the attitude and approaches obtained and implemented are an incentive to reduce the discouragement, lower achievements and apathy in the schools. Multiplying positive reflection effects and influence also on the schools that are in the same region, district, network of the ones directly involved can be singfed out; they in fact will have at their disposal the tools created during EiYoU!A great enthusiasm was clearly demonstrated by teachers towards the actions promoted at EU level thanks to the Erasmus+ programme; they acquired a positive approach and renovated passion for their job.The reuse, adaptation and multiplication of the methods will contribute on the long term to reach early school leaving rates of 10% or less, supporting the goals of Europe 2020."