FIG. 2

Final report - project MOVE 2017-2018

Related sectors such as logistics, health, manufacturing and construction are also part of Agrifood Capital. It seeks equal opportunities for all young people. Their ambition is to ensure that young people, after leaving secondary school, move on to higher education, to the labour market, to an appropriate day care or to a reintegration program.

On a national level

Jet Bussemaker, the Dutch Government Minister for Education, announced In her letter (2016) to the parliament of Culture and Science, that although the focus is on preventing failure, particular attention to young people who have previously dropped out (so-called 'old-dropouts) remains of great importance. Therefore, she asked municipalities to keep this group into sharp focus in the coming years. She also called for creation of a consistent regional safety net in which education and communities work closely together.

In the context of transnational cooperation, the goal of this project was to search and acquire alternative forms and methods, which we could apply as additional reintegration instruments for vulnerable young unemployed people in the City of ‘s-Hertogenbosch. These instruments include tools that provide structure and security with more guidance and more in line with the experiences of young people, focused on intrinsic motivation and the 21-century skills.

1.2 Why transnational?

In 2016, the city of Den Bosch was participating with Portugal and Italy (among other countries) in an international Erasmus project "2young2fail". A project focused on the prevention of early school leavers and dropouts. Some best practices from this project were very applicable for our project. Youth Unemployment is a transnational problem. Whatever cultural and economic differences exist between the three countries participating in the project, issues such as social exclusion and youth unemployment are similar. We could learn a lot from one another through the best experiences of knowledge transfer. All this in the context of the less fortunate position of vulnerable youth with different kind of problems and issues.

Moreover, the EU is working on creating equal opportunities for all young people (European Union Youth Report, 2015). They aim to do this by creating jobs and battling unemployment. Beside this, the EU focusses on battling extremism and radicalization by stimulating and promoting social coherence and youth participation in society. Central in all of this is to reach and involve young people of all backgrounds in many different activities. The EU Member States work together in handling these challenges by using a cross sectoral approach, for example between Education and Social Services departments. Due to current financial cutbacks from EU budgets a risk was formed for young disenfranchised (unemployed) people, because less money is available to reach out to this vulnerable group of people. Based on this risk, the EU has set three priorities for the coming years:

1. Social inclusion for all young people, especially vulnerable young people

Fig. 2