Location and general information
Employability - 
Personal development - SponsorsContext
Football provides an opportunity to address young adults struggling to enter the job market and help them through education, activities to improve job-seeking skills, vocational training and personal development programmes. This project aligns with the Football for Unity concept that the UEFA Foundation for Children and streetfootballworld will implement together during the UEFA EURO 2020 competition. For the first time ever, the tournament will be played in 12 European cities and will see the activation of local initiatives using football to promote social development. The programme will be delivered in four locations (Bucharest, Budapest, Dublin, Birmingham) aiming deliver demonstrable results by bringing youngsters closer to education, employment and training (EET).
This project is being run in close collaboration with streetfootballworld and FedEx.
Project content
The target group and activities in the four locations are broken down as follows:
Birmingham, UK - Sport 4 Life (S4L UK)
S4L UK provides the opportunity for disadvantaged young people aged 12–29 to prepare for and move into sustained education, employment or training by improving their employability and key life skills, through sports-themed personal development programmes. The two main pillars of its work are the TEENS programme (personal development programme for socially excluded 12–16 year-olds) and the NEETS (Not in Education, Employment, or Training) programme (employability and personal development programme for 16–29 year-olds). This project will allow S4L UK to strengthen its actions by scaling the methodologies and approaches of the ‘Team up! toolkit’, resulting in extended reach and higher overall impact numbers.
Bucharest, Romania - Policy Center for Roma and Minorities (PCRM)
The organisation enables youngsters aged 7–18 to play an active role in society and promotes inclusion through sustainable educational and football-based programmes. A small-scale employability programme called the ‘Alternative Education Club’, provides workshops and non-formal education through arts and sports. This project will allow the PCRM to consolidate its activities and offer this programme to greater numbers of marginalised young people.
Budapest Hungary - Oltalom Sport Association (OSA)
Oltalom has developed football-based and educational programmes to help young people aged 16–30 integrate into society. In addition to English lessons, a social support and counselling programme helps these young people to draft CVs and cover letters and provides mock job interviews to improve their interview techniques. This project will enable the organisation to consolidate its employability programme.
Dublin, lreland - Sport Against Racism lreland (SARI)
SARI was founded as an NGO in 1997 to support cultural integration and social inclusion in lreland by using sport, particularly football, as a medium to combat racism, sectarianism, homophobia and other forms of discrimination. As the organisation has grown, SARI has developed a youth leadership programme that provides young leaders with the necessary skills to reach their full potential. This project will enable SARI to strengthen its employability programmes within the youth leadership programme and enable more young people to transition to employment, education and training.
Objectives
- The project will utilise the TeamUp! toolkit, which was the outcome of a pan-European project supported by Erasmus+ and delivered within the framework of the European Commission's Strategic Partnerships for Youth.The toolkit:
- delivers an innovative approach to one of Europe's most pressing social challenges: youth unemployment;
- identifies and disseminates best practices and impact-proven methodologies to key players in the sectors of sports, youth employability and non-formal education;
- arms organisations with a comprehensive understanding of how to develop and run football-based employability programmes;
- targets young adults not in education, employment or training and equips them with the skills they need to build new paths towards a sustainable livelihood.
- This initiative brings youth in the four different European countries closer to employment and further education by providing capacity building opportunities for local community organisations and supporting local football for employability programmes. Football serves as a low threshold engagement tool for the local, disadvantaged youth that are difficult to reach through other methods of communication, and as methodology to foster soft skills for increased employability of the participants. This is supplemented by specific hard skill and job skill training sessions, e.g. CV writing workshops, language classes, etc. After the first project phase in 19/20, the further need has been identified by the project consortium for further capacity development modules and specific training programmes on how to successfully implement specific employability activities. The 20/21 project will address this need.
Project activities
FOOTBALL AND EMPLOYABILITY PROGRAMMES:
The partner organisations implement football and employability programmes in disadvantaged communities. Employability activities are structured around three skill areas:
- Soft skills for employability– personal attributes needed to operate successfully in society
- Job seeking skills – practical skills for finding and applying for a job
- Hard skills – qualifications needed to perform a specific job
CAPACITY BUILDING AND ORGANISATIONAL DEVELOPMENT:
The participating organisations will, guided by streetfootballworld and the expert organisation Sport4Life UK, develop organisational action plans to implement and extent their employability programmes.
Expected results
A three-stage impact measurement process represents the three main milestones in the participant’s journey
- Engagement: number of young people engaged in the programme
- Increased employability: number of young people who successfully gain skills and motivation
- Progression: number of young people moved from ‘not in education, employment or training’ to ‘in education, employment or training’.
Partner
