UBC Task Force Supporting Youth Employment and Well-Being:
Highlights in the Memory Lane
by Matti Mäkelä | matti.makela@turku.fi
The first seven years of the Task Force Supporting Youth Employment and Well-Being have been very active and successful. We have arranged over 30 study visits, conferences, seminars and workshops, created a web-site, collected the best practices and implemented new projects. Join us in walking down the memory lane.
During the following years TF strengthened cooperation with other actors and networks, such as School to work and StartNet, working to tackle the same challenges. In May 2019 TF held a long planned Youth Guarantee Conference in Brussels in close cooperation with the European Committee of the Regions.
The theme of the UBC 2013 general conference was combating youth unemployment and marginalisation. Because of this, Finnish member cities had appointed their own experts to a working group, which was tasked with preparing a programme to promote youth employment and well-being.
In 2020 and 2021 TF has concentrated on three themes: STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math), attractiveness of the vocational education and basic skills. The idea behind the theme-based approach is that concentrating on certain issues would make cooperation and creation of common goals and projects easier, as we have already seen during these two years.
City of Turku took the leading role in this work and the UBC Programme to Promote Youth Employment and Well-Being was introduced in Mariehamn general conference. Discussions in Mariehamn clearly indicated that UBC Member Cities were interested in working together to tackle youth unemployment and marginalization. Therefore, the UBC General Conference decided to establish a Task Force on youth employment and well-being. The next big step was in 2015 when TF published The Good, the Bad and the Next Practices report about the current state of the implementation of the Youth Guarantee in BSR. Report also included the best Youth Guarantee practices from the region.
We have, like everyone else, been affected by Covid-19 and during the last year all our activities (seminars, workshops, meetings) have been held on-line (last live event was STEAM study visit to Tallinn on February 2020). However, we are already planning our post-corona activities and hopefully we will have live gatherings starting early 2022, if not already during the next autumn.
