Project dutration: 7 October 2004–15 May 2005
Project co-funder: World Bank
Project coordinator: Youth Career Advising Centre
Project partners:
Modern Didactics Centere
Open Society Fund-Lithuania project “Towards Digital Communities”
Freepik.com photo
PROJECT RELEVANCE
This project deals with youth career policy issues and transfer of knowledge in the following ways:
• promoting and supporting positive attitude toward real possibilities for young people to pursue their careers in Lithuania;
• focusing on the social dialogue between state administration, business, academic and civil communities in order to encourage local governments on the sustainable developments of long term local youth career support strategies.
The idea of the project is
1) to identify youth success cases and non-traditional and innovative career choices in different administrative regions, in such areas as humanities, social sciences and regional development, e.g.: contribution to the community, development education, personal growth, environment protection, fair trade, innovative initiatives, and
2) to demonstrate them using innovative show-case methods.
3) to enhance the role of local strategic partnerships, media and community participation to highlight successful youth career paradigms and influence public opinion.
Special attention will be given to a representative sample of career cases, which later will comprise a list of potential partners for youth work-linked activities. One of the target sectors of the project is the new and innovative methodology of building regional youth career support strategies oriented towards community added value and individual growth where particular emphasis will be given to good practice demonstrative cases, networking with social partners and initiatives oriented towards using new technologies and innovative teaching/learning tools.
The burning issue of the project is to create innovative but realistic, simple and attractive instruments which will motivate local communities to participate and cooperate in distinguishing and exhibiting successful career cases more efficiently and benefit from it.
PROJECT AIMS
- To promote and support positive attitude toward real possibilities for young people to pursue their careers in Lithuania by demonstrating success stories.
- To encourage local governments on the positive developments of long term local youth career support strategies.
PROJECT OBJECTIVES
- To build local strategic partnerships (including all three sectors: non-profit, private and governmental) for the establishment of local project development units.
- To use portal Digital Communities in www.bendruomene.lt (currently inactive) for open discussions, consultations and debates on topic “Successful career stories”.
- To inform communities about the initiative and to enhance the role of the voluntary community participation.
- To identify not traditional regional youth success stories in: personal growth, innovative initiatives, contribution to the community, fair trade, developmental education and demonstrate them using innovative show-case methods.
- To encourage media to report positive show cases to influence public opinion.
- To explore the role local strategic partnerships could play in promoting non-standard, innovative career choices.
- To develop local strategic partnership models in: big city, town, and village.
PROJECT TARGET GROUPS
The beneficiaries of the project are young people in the first place as well as state administrative bodies, business, academic and local community members, and finally youth policy makers.
PROJECT ACTIVITIES
- Knowledge–Sharing Days;
- Success Fairs;
- Public presentations – articles, TV and radio debates and discussions, film and photo sessions, community portal www.bendruomenes.lt (currently inactive);
- Press conferences;
- The use of information technologies for consultancy, open discussions, information dissemination, and databases;
- Presentations of success stories – video films, interviews, photo reports, fairs, articles, and TV reports.
PROJECT RESULTS
- The project presented an innovative data base of successful career makers and join them into the open online forum with project participants.
- The project encouraged social partners to cooperate for the community interests and needs and will serve as a guiding tool for other regions.
- The project prepared training tools with practical implications how to support youth career paths, service and work-linked learning methodologies and 5 youth career support strategies which will introduce significant changes in youth policy and increase employment level in the regions.
- The project invoked media to play a significant role highlighting positive and effective community development issues.