Covid-19 is leading to the emergence of a “lockdown generation”, as the crisis hits young people’s job prospects. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO) the pandemic is having a “devastating and disproportionate” impact on youth employment, while the most recent figures show that young people face major obstacles in continuing training and education, moving between jobs, and entering the labor market. Before the pandemic, EU youth unemployment (15-24) was 14.9%, down from its peak of 24.4% in 2013. In July 2020, it rose to 17%. The European Commission’s summer 2020 economic forecast predicts that the EU economy will shrink 8.3% in 2020, the deepest recession in the EU’s history.
Access to skilled digital workers is already a key factor for XXI century businesses. In an increasingly data-driven future – the European Commission believes there could be as many as 756,000 unfilled jobs in the European ICT sector by the end of 2020 – these numbers will exponentially grow due to the impact of the COVID19 pandemic.
In this context, the project “Transforming COVID-19 into an opportunity: new inclusive digital jobs and training for your people in the creative sector” or responding to its colloquial name “Jovid19, Digital jobs for a Digital era”, is recognizing creativity and culture creation as a natural strong point of younger generations and ensuring efforts to create better inclusive training according to the new skill needed to be fostered by COVID19 as well as better employment and self-employment opportunities that will allow youngsters to get economically active even in a lockdown situation.
In concrete, the project is aiming at:
- Enhance digital skills development and competencies of young people, reinforcing creativity and creative solutions to unemployment rates provoked by COVID-19.
- Enabling collaborations between the youth sector and the business sector for inclusive digital cultural and creative job creation.
Specifically, the project aims at:
- Develop youngster’s creativity through digital skills for the development of innovative solutions to the negative consequences of the COVID19 pandemic.
- Close the digital skills gap and ensure that new generations are prepared to embrace the opportunities of an even more digitalized labor market.
- Enabling a platform where potential employers and young jobseekers can meet and work together.
- Helping on the recuperation of the European cultural and creative sector, vital for the economic, social, and mental wellbeing of our communities.
- Defining COVID-19 especially related policy recommendations aiming to promote incentives for businesses hiring unemployed young people for remote digital jobs and successful measures and provided benefits to promote youth self-employment.
Four main types of results are envisioned over the two years project duration to ensure the defined achievement and impacts:
- A series of audiovisual materials (13 videos) easily usable & sharable to master digital skills related to professional edition, production and post-production of audiovisual content.
- A mobile APP defined as a direct contact marketplace between young people selling their digital services and companies, institutions & individuals searching for digital services.
- A series of policy recommendations aiming to foster youth employability by promoting incentives for businesses hiring unemployed young people for remote digital jobs, as well as successful measures and provided benefits to promote youth self-employment.
- A 6 full-days intensive tailored-made training designed for unemployed young people to boost and professionalized their digital & self-employment skills.
- A series of local & national based dissemination events to ensure the successful engagement of related stakeholders as well as impact and use of project results.
In addition, the project is designed to support one digital entrepreneurial activity per partner country presented by participating unemployed youngsters, accompanying young people from the initial stages till implementation phase.
jovid19.eu 