The 1.39 mil EUR worth “Youth Impact” project proposal submitted under the “Active Youth Call” of the “EEA and Norway Grants Fund for Youth Employment” was selected for funding.
Coordinated by Channel Crossings (CZ) and partnered by PEDAL Consulting (SK), Foundation in Support of Local Democracy (PL) and Institute for Innovative and Preventive Job Design (GE), the project will last for 40 months and it will:
- provide tools and services to improve the ability & capacity of NGOs, public and private institutions addressing youth unemployment to efficiently evaluate the impact of their activities; and
- build a transnational research network to increase the capacity of organisations devoted to/or interested in impact studies.
Slated to kick off in 3Q/2018, the project adopts a practical “capacity building” approach to the area of concern. Based on the partnership, it seeks to create a network of “impact evaluation consulting” organisations and equip them with skills, made-to-measure tools and resources which they could use to directly help YEEAs (Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship Support Actions) implementers to improve their capacity and capability to perform impact evaluation.
The YEEAs will be supported on organisations´ level (testing of evaluation packages) as well as on individuals´ level (blended-learning training). We seek, first, to create tools for the general youth, which will be then adapted to the specific needs of the 25-29.
All partnership countries invested in recent years large sums (both national and EU resources) into youth employment and entrepreneurship support (CZ,PL,SK rank among the biggest EU beneficiaries). Still, despite the recent economic recovery (2016 GDP growth: CZ 2.6%, PL 2.7%, SK 3.3%, DE 1.9%: Eurostat), the countries face many challenges:
- General and youth unemployment gap: Eurostat, V/2017: CZ 3%x9.2%, PL 4.8%x14.1%, SK 8.1%x18.6%, DE 3.9%x6.7%
- NEETs’ ratio (Eurostat, 2016): CZ 13.6% PL 15.1% SK 18.2% – DE 10.4%
- Other youth employment problems: young migration & brain drain, skills mismatch (labour force x labour market)
- Transfer of research know-how into implementation practice
- Impact evaluation is quoted as one of the weak spots of such interventions, whose impact is often criticized.
PEDAL Consulting will lead the activities related to the entrepreneurship evaluation and support services.
For more information, please contact r.miskuf@pedal-consulting.eu
