Team Up for NEETs – Innovation for Youth Employability Erasmus Project

Project Title

Team Up for NEETs – Innovation for Youth Employability

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment; Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)

Project Summary

Youth unemployment in the EU peaked at 23.9%in 2013, after several years of financial downturn following the economic crisis of 2008. Young people were severely hit by this global financial crisis because job vacancy numbers plummeted, competition for jobs became fierce, and those at the bottom of the ladder (e.g. young people with no work experience and few or no qualifications) were excluded from the labour market. Since 2013 figures have improved – but youth unemployment remains a very important issue. Tackling youth unemployment is on the agenda of governments, policymakers, NGOs and the community sector – and a wide variety of strategies, initiatives and activities are being used.

To address these challenges, streetfootballworld has joined forces with community organisations in the EU to launch “Team Up! Increasing youth employability through football-based programmes” – a pan-European project, supported by ERAMUS+ in the framework of Strategic Partnerships for Youth. The project targets youth workers, teachers and NGOs working with young Europeans who are NEET and equips them with the skills they need to offer and build new paths towards a sustainable livelihood. Through a combination of non-formal education, sport-based youth work and employability training, the programme offers an innovative approach to Europe’s most pressing social challenge.

Project partners
For the development and implementation of Team Up! streetfootballworld strategically selected a consortium of eight project partners from the UK, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Portugal and Spain, leaders in the field of education and employability through sport. Each of these streetfootballworld members brings real expertise from many years of successful work on their local and regional level into the project to ensure sustainability, ownership and real societal transformation from within European communities – with a greater, more effective and faster impact. Team Up! project partners included: Sport dans la Ville (France), Albion in the Community (UK), Sport 4 Life UK (UK), Sport Against Racism Ireland (Ireland), Oltalom Sports Association (Hungary), CAIS (Portugal), RheinFlanke (Germany) and Red Deporte (Spain).

The primary focus of Team Up! has been the development of a shared toolkit of best practices to increase youth employability through football-based programmes, aiming at expanding and further developing innovative solutions to tackling youth unemployment and improving non-formal education through cross-border cooperation; establishing a basis for on-going learning, impact measurement and development of the field; sharing and transfering information on best practice and methodologies for wider dissemination; and fostering synergies between innovative approaches in non-formal education, sport-based social work and employment training for NEET young people.

The objectives pursued over the course of the funding period were:
1) Establishing project partner organisations as European knowledge hubs to set quality standards in the field of youth employability through sport;
2) Creating an accessible common European toolkit as a modular solution to transfer impact-measured, successful practices;
3) Developing a shared Monitoring and Performance Measurement Framework to track social impact and help assess the collective and individual organisations progress against key youth work indicators;
4) Increasing awareness and dissemination of innovative non-formal education practices and create visibility through the Multiplier events;
5) Facilitating Euopean-wide continuatiuon of the measures after the funding period.

The most tangible result achieved through the project has been the creation of the European toolkit of best practices to increase youth employability through sport-based non-formal education. Furthermore, the project has supported the eight partner organisations, reaching up to 129,353 young NEETs and engaging 43,248 in their path to employment, education or further training all over Europe. In addition, the project has established a common cross-sectoral European understanding and proven to be a milestone in the field of football-based employability programmes, enabling an effective platform for innovation in the field and using the outcomes of the project to engage stakeholders from a variety of fields – including sports, the public sector, the corporate world, youth organisations and academia, in the creation of a hollistic approach for the fields of youth work, non-formal education, and sports-based employability.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 218703,51 Eur

Project Coordinator

STREETFOOTBALLWORLD GGMBH & Country: DE

Project Partners

• ASS SPORT DANS LA VILLE
• RHEINFLANKE GGMBH
• ALBION IN THE COMMUNITY
• SPORT AGAINST RACISM (IRELAND) LIMITED
• SPORT 4 LIFE UK
• FUNDACION RED DEPORTE Y COOPERATION
• CAIS – ASSOCIACAO DE SOLIDARIEDADE SOCIAL