Dialogue on mobility: challenge and future opportunity, Stockholm, Sweden

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Dialogue on mobility: challenge and future opportunity.

Some practical experiences from Italy

Paola Moscatelli Bergnéhr

 

The meeting started with a presentation of the participants:

Göran Sjöberg, senior consult at European Minds has a long experience working with mobility (since the 90: s) and dealing with mobility issues at European level. Göran Sjöberg, is also a member of board of directors at European Minds and offers support in developing EU strategies, EU applications, transnational projects and partnerships. Europeanminds deliver also project support services like monitoring and ongoing evaluation.

Emanuela Atzori, functionary at Regional Employment Agency of Regional Government of Sardinia; responsible of the Regional Center for Youth Mobility of www.movesardegna.eu; interested in establishing partnerships with special focus on work placements abroad for social or economically disadvantaged youth. Start the first experience setting a regional mobility center for mobility for youngster and other individuals. Organization works with ESF: “Master and back” is i.e. a project that pays scholarships for participants that study at university abroad and come back with new knowledge in their original region in order to set up a business or to get a work (Sardinia)

Giovanni Crisoná, director of CSCS. CSCS provides training and mobility programmes. CSCS was one of the first organizations in the European Union to implement the Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs Programme in 2008/2009. CSCS has started Italymobility. CSCS is deeply involved in capacitybuilding project dealing with VET and mobility.

Niclas Olund, responsible for communication at Merit, a ESF project owned by the Municipality of Stockholm, targeting young unemployed who receive subsidies from the municipality. Niclas is nterested in how is it possible to promote mobility and in transnational activities.

Serge D’Oria: President of UNISCO, NGO based in Bari, Puglia Region, active in the field of training, transnational learning mobility, European networks. UNISCO is active in entrepreneurship programs as local contact point of the Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs. Unisco network for local development training and education focused in mobility projects: mobility for entrepreneurs. Serge is interested in transnational cooperation. Unisco has been working with “Active principle”, call for proposal for young people that finances the project ideas from youngster. Serge is interested in transnational cooperation.

Marco Costantino, functionary at Youth Policies and Active Citizenship Department at Regione Puglia (Regional Government of Apulia), active in promoting initiatives specifically addressed to youngsters, including Non Formal Education, NEET, Urban Labs, and Active Principles which include more than 800 projects accomplished by youngsters, etc; Specific objectives include to promote transnational learning mobility and strengthening european dimension in local activities.

Pia Nilsson, Eures consultant and responsible for Leonardo and Leonardo I – mobility projects at Arbetsförmedlingen.

Paola Moscatelli Bergnéhr, Eu-funds coordinator at Arbetsförmedlingen, the Swedish Public Employment Service, managing the transnational activities and mobility for Unga In, a ESF project targeting Neet.

Katrin Lilliehöök, head of unit at International affairs and responsible for cooperation for high education.  Sigrid Fogelberg, desk office for Leonardo program at UHR. UHR is the new national agency for University and High education institution Councils. Among their missions: providing relevant information about colleges and universities, offering admission services, offer opportunity for international cooperation. UHR is a new authority from 5 different authorities since January. One of their mission is high education area and international cooperation, mostly with developing countries and funding from LLP program: Erasmus +. According to the UHR is important to establish a dialogue with the esf authorities and other actors involved in the next programme.

Karin Törnqvist and Ewa Holsti, coordinators at ESF Council, the government agency responsible for managing the European Social Fund and European Integration Fund in Sweden. The Authority’s activities span several policy areas, mainly Labour, social, educational, and integration policies. Mobility in the next programme. ESF

Learning transnational network 2014: common call for proposal might be needed

The experiences

  1. Giovanni explains the reason why he would like to meet stakeholders in mobility. meeting:

CSCS way to manage Europe mobility network comes from a transfer innovation project: Europe mobility (a project based by a research of PWC called Move it). CSCS´s project had to spread the information from the project. In 2010 they started a new project in thematic network: collect actors dealing with mobility in Europe in a network. The network collects mobility coordinators and a commission that produce standard for delivering of mobility services with quality.

Another project related to mobility is: Mobility4 all. Mobility 4 all is a project targeting applicants with special needs.

The Commission is directing financing a dissemination activity for the project..

It is important to share ideas and valuable experience within mobility. Mixing ideas. There are 5 commissions working permanently and there are free available resources.

The target group of mobility activities:

Enlarge the sector involves: university sector, consortium, the vet sector and non-formal education. With actors describe in the sector of “Non formal education” means the NGO sector and foundation in Italy.

The commission work in parallel steps to come up with the standard, there is even a learning trasnational network for mobility (ESF Sweden and Ungdomstyrelsen are active member in the network and Arbetsförmedlingen is involved in the network).

  1. Marco Costantino presents his experience in Puglia (see attached ppt)

Below some important aspects in Marco Costantino´s projects.

  • Participation, social innovation. Youth policy to activate the youngster
  • Some international dimension in all the projects
  • bar camps
  • youth workers: matter of trust

Some challenges according to Marco Costantino

Co-funding ERDF ESF: no strategy about mobility but mobility components in the initiative

Contraints in how to use money do make it hard to use the ESF for funding some initiatives.

Can the regional level influence the planning of the funds? It is possible according to Marco

  1. Emanuela presents the MOVE project

MOVE´s idea starts one year ago in Sardinia region. In Sardinia there is a youth policy but no unique organization for it:

Not coordinated youth policy made it hard to get it functioning. The region has the possibility to start pilot activities. So:

The idea of Move was presented to the managing director who liked the idea: 200.000 euro was the sum to finance the activity.

Why Move started:

  • Mobility sector in Sardinia was known but there was no point to collect the different options: Erasmus or the others programs.
  • Young people even do not know which might be the best option for mobility for themselves (volunteer, Erasmus, a. Move aims to give information not only to the individuals but also to schools, administration, providing assistance to collect their needs, find partners for them, involve them in projects and so on.
  • A need to gather information

How we operated: we Set up a conference, having technical assistance of CSCS.

The idea is to get the right amount of demand in order to offer good services (a critical mass). Move would like to give opportunity to target group such NEET and long term unemployed.

Reality is that there are quite a lot of individual which are about 40 and have no work in Sardinia : they have been offering mobility in the programme mobility for entrepreneurs.

Move is using a process call Steps to prepare the individuals: it is a motivational approach from Irland.

Another goal: to bring mobility in employment policies. The organized some study visit and let knowing the IDA programme.

In the regional documents mobility is included in the next programming. Sardinia is planning to involve the employment offices all over Sardinia.

Mobility is even working well in Erasmus for young entepreneurs: en exchange from 1-6 months for young entrepreneurs. The young visits the company abroad. Our objective is in the field of education and vocational training: insert mobility as mandatory in the courses: the reason is because when you insert mobility you create much more awareness.

Training course with mandatory mobility experience. In the region there is a strong attention to the Neet because of the high rate (29,5 %)

Mobility for Neet: there is a need to create a strong system of communication (social actors).

  1. Niclas from the Merit project has some questions – related to his experience in the project and at the municipality- to Emanuela.

Niclas is working with outreaching project in Järva fältet, near Stockholm. Jobbtorg Stockholm is a part of the city administration and they have a problem in funding the individuals abroad. There is not a clear solution about the social subsidies abroad and the social servant are not willing to pay for such activities.

How are the individuals financed when they are on mobility?

Emanuela replies: In Sardinia you cannot trust only on EU fundings. There is a transregional funding that can be used for mobility using the revenue from other successful projects is the way of funding the new projects.

  1. Pia Nilsson from Arbetsförmedlingen, the Swedish Public employment service describes shortly her experience with mobility:

Pia has managing a two Leonardo projects and have placed about 50 young people in Italy, Norway, Finland and Britain.

Target group is young unemployed people under 25 years old. The experience has been great. Pia has been working for several years with the target group and I can see that the result is unbelievable.

Arbetsförmedlingen gives a lot of support, arranging where to go, logistic, pocket money and so on. There young people have never been abroad and most of them are between 19-23 old.

When they come back they have work experience, life experience, that had a chance to practice language skills and they are ready to go long in their lives. Within a few months they are not registered in the employment services.

Good cooperation with a company in Norway and the hope is to apply for another period.

  1. Karin and Sigrid from UHR have been experiencing some administrative and bureaucratic problem while Arbetsförmedlingen has been managing the Leonardo:

During the past years they have been fighting to make the participants keep some money and to be able to be registered at the unemployment office without losing “days” (subsidies are given on daily basis according to registration at the office). The efforts seem to have given some results since it has been possible for the participants to be abroad not losing the subsidies.

Karin gives the participants some relevant information about Erasums +

The main goal is to fight youth unemployment: simplification of the programme and some relevant changes in the target group.

3 key actions

  • Key Action 1: student and staff mobility (within Europe and / or to / from Third Countries); joint master’s degrees
  • Key Action 2: strategic partnerships, knowledge alliances, capacity building with neighboring countries, capacity building with Third Countries
  • Key Action 3: networks and policy support measures (to be handled by the commission).

The commission is transferring the “group of unemployed” on the social fund. This means that there is a need for exchange of experience within Leonardo and ESF in the near future. There is a need to straightness the communication with the esf about how to work with this group.

Newly graduated people can apply for Leonardo for a period one year after the examinations.

Mobility is not always compatible with the rigidity of the authorities´s system.

ESF´s representatives stress that uncertainty about what it will happen in the next programme period. Mobility is not yet developed. ESF is a funding sources and other institutions have to make the programme, decide on priority and solutions.

The region of Stockholm is quite prosperous compared to the descripted today.

They will ask for certain project to be sold. Probably, if Stockholm will have the idea of mobility, then the priority might be set up at ESF.

Niclas asks the representative for Sardinia region: “How do you manage the politics to value the mobility programme for social inclusion”? The target group registered at “jobbtorg” (the municipalities ´offices for employment) has not been seen the right one for mobility : the idea is that other instrument let unemployed back to work and education faster and the idea is to get people back to work as fast as possible.

The representative from Sardinia replies that it is not an easy choice for politician or any decision takers (even unemployed themselves).

 

Mobility has to be pushed on the debate as a good solution because is not a natural way to go for public administration and authorities.

 

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