Tour4Youth

Results

Tour4Youth – summary of the project’s results

Context and problem

The regional challenge concerning youth employment in Central Baltic region highlights that young people’s employment needs special attention in rural areas due to lack of opportunities and furth there is a need to provide them means to be able to stay in their rural living areas via work and employment impacted also by global crisis. Hence, young people are exposed to higher risks of unemployment, and they face strong uncertainties in labour market entry and stable integration. Planning for future and long-term career progression as well as building a resilient career is more difficult.

The sectoral challenges includes providing workforce to the labour-intensive service sectors of tourism, hospitality, and restaurant sectors. In this, supporting youth employment is of utmost importance since the sector relies to young people especially in entry level jobs in the Central Baltic regions. These sectors create more jobs for young people than any other sector and are a valuable source of youth employment and income, also of entrepreneurship. Their social role in accompanying young people into the labour market is crucial, and these sectors are a lifeline and a solution for youth employment especially in rural areas.

The specific problem addressed was youth employment in tourism, hospitality and restaurant sectors. The above mentioned regional and sectoral challenges are highlighted among the less competitive young people aged 15-24 years in the Central Baltic rural areas.

Idea and solution

Tour4Youth provided new solutions to youth employment in the tourism, hospitality and restaurant sector for the less competitive participants aged 15-24 years in the Central Baltic region and improve their employment opportunities on labour market. Employment, both local and international in Central Baltic region, and entrepreneurial aspects of work were cross-cutting in the program. Tour4Youth met or exceeded the aims in the quality and quantity of supporting young people to employment and quality work career. READY! STEADY! GO!

Implementation and impact

In total 120 youngsters completed the career management online course, which enhanced their abilities to engage in local and Central Baltic work market. To support this introduction days and personal coaching sessions were provided to guide the participants towards their quality career in the field. The participants benefited greatly from the online course, introduction days and personal coaching session according to their feedback.

Of these 120 young people who completed the online course, to connect them with job markets, 77 continued to local and Central Baltic level traineeships. Most participants chose local traineeship to benefit their employability and future work. Four international traineeships were taken among in the Central Baltic region. The participants’ feedback on the traineeships was very good. In addition, some of the traineeships have turned into paid employment. Also, some participants were employed during the Tour4Youth program before taking the traineeship. Hence, Tour4Youth program proved its power in supporting target group to employment.

In addition, it is noteworthy, that 102 companies offered traineeship positions, which shows the need for employees in the tourism, hospitality and restaurant sector as well as their socially responsible attitude towards young people’s employment. To support this matchmaking and recruitment, large and targeted local events were held as well as online events on Central Baltic level. Participation of the young people in these events was good as nearly 700 youngsters took part in the local events and over 70 in the Central Baltic level events. In these encounters, several connections towards employment were made. Extra points go to employers who definitely went extra miles for the participants to integrate them into work via traineeships and their nurturing caused by social responsibility.