Tuesday did a continuation of the monday, since all countries didn't get the opportunity to do their presentation on monday. I started off presenting this blog to the participants, and I chose to pose infront of the camera with a "me and this macintosh aren't working well together" look.
Turkey enters the stage and we are painted a picture of a very young labour force. When i recieved the information that the high unemployment figures were due to a high unemployment number among the women I dont think i was that suprised. i wouldn't be suprised to hear that there is a big differance in the acceptance of women on the labour market compared to Sweden, and we still have some issues with it.
To me it's unthinkable to pay less to women that does same amount of work as the men, but it's also equally unthinkable to give a job to a woman just because she's a woman. Gender shouldn't affect the ability to work in any way.
I think that Turkey's goals to make the work situation for youths are quite similar to the general idea Sweden use. At least thats how i feel, because we too are aiming to connect education and labour market needs.
Greece was up next. the amount of information they had was very impressive, tho it was a pity that i couldn't read greek. The thing that struck me was all the efforts in training courses and trying to solve problems with language by expressing and building social bridges with art. I could see a problem arise when i read that 77% of the graduates aim to work in the public sector. Unless there is an abundance of public work its gonna get clogged.
Preveza was also a very good example of an area where the amount of available jobs fluctuated with the seasons. This also affected the youth, because they seemed to prefer to move into the bigger cities instead. This is a situation not unfamiliar to me, since Vål berg and the bigger town Karlstad basically works the same. Vålberg once had a factory and while that factory remained in Vålberg it was a nice place with lots of people. Now it's shrunk down to a minimum and even tho it's still a nice place to grow a family in, there's no incentive to live there now that the job opportunities are lost.
A closing speech came from their deputy mayor in Evosmos, and i liked that even tho he didn't know english he decided it was important enough to make a personal opinion of this event that he decided to come. I think this shows dedication on a personal level.
During the cofee break i spoke some more with Martin about working abroad and about Bulgaria. maybe I want to go there if the opportunity arrise? I was so sure of myself before that there were only a few places I wanted to visit, but now i feel a have so many more countries to visit in europe before i switch continent. Europe still has much to offer me, and im definatly not afraid.
I managed to avoid these goodies. They're great, but I think i take up a big enough prescense in the room as it is! (and yes, i regret this descision of course).
Poland describes their situation as such that when the youth graduate second level school they dont recieve any benefits unless they've been unemployed for eighteen months. The youth seldom have any work experiance and even the vocational schools or courses didn't seem to be able to give the youth the amount of experiance they would like to.
One thing that seems to work well for Poland tho is the internships. Both youths and employers are favourable to this program.
I would like to touch on this, and say that internships usually is restricted to certain types of work in Sweden. Craftsmen in general, construction and such. I think that more areas would benefit to use a type of internship program to introduce youth to how it works in the real world, because we have no work experiance in school unless its vocational or some universities.
Joanna from Liverpool gives us a presentation about her company, Sonic Boom, which is a DJ tuition. I have several friends that have some socializing problems either due to disabilities like aspbergers or generally just lack of practice. Music, and the love for it helps to focus. Or rather it doesnt matter what you find that you can focus on, as long as you find something that you can focus on and go at it with all your heart will make you stronger.
I liked how Sonic Boom helps youth with not only how to DJ but also all the things around it, which when you look at it as a whole picture is the real work of being a DJ. everything from producing music to making the grafics for the CD to presenting your work on the internet and job hunting.
This project or program shows the working elements in Communicare which is to motivate youth to take actions of their own towards what they want to do.
After lunch we took a quick walk over to a store called Random Brand which is a clothing store. What's so special about this one besides being the only store in karlstad that sells these brands is that both the owner and the employee are former participants in Communicare.
Here we can se Klas Johansson, one of our Job coaches rubbing his hands like a scheming goblin. I'm still trying to figure out why tho.
Eriks story is a long one but in short, Erik entered Communicare with out knowing what he wanted to do. Klas was his Job coach at the time and after meeting and talking Erik got motivated into doing some promitional videos for the swedish military. It got as far as getting an ok from a general, but the project failed. so Erik goes back to the drawing board and tries again, this time doing a promotional video of them driving cars evaluating and testing them. But this effort as well fails.
Next Erik realises that he's always liked clothes in his life, and decided to aim to own an outlet for clothes. But even this project fails, or in a way it didn't because Erik just decided to make it a grander scheme and turned it into the store. Emelie to the left in the picture got employed about the same time that she also helped with some designs and arranging and decorating the store. The store has been up and running now for five months and we all hope it's gonna be around for a long time.
After the visit to Random Brand we go to the office of Communicare. Here we get a quick tour (since its not that big of an office to begin with) and get a presentation of what Communicare really is. Much was said and it's hard to describe the whole picture but in essence Communicare is a way to change the way of thinking when it comes to getting youth into the labour market.
Instead of looking into the past and try to fit these qualifications with any availabe jobs Communicare focuses on what you want to do, and identify what steps you need to take to get there. So the job coaches at Communicare aren't telling us youths what do do but instead askes what we want to do and then yell at us "well, go out and do it then!" in a positive way.
I still remember the first little speech i got from Klas when i started at Communicare. "I'm gonna care who you are and im gonna care about what you want to do, and try and hel you in any way possible. But i won't lose any sleepif you don't act". This line might look harsh but its a wake-up call. It cvertainly was for me. it told me that my future is my own to control. No one else should do that.
The evening entertainment was handled by a group from the participants and it was a guessing game where we were to guess the meaing of a word written in a foreign language. Naturally it woud be hard to make up english words, but the words weren't that easy i can tell you! The dinner and the game was held at a resturant that's called "The Boat". The resturant is a boat that has been deliberatly stranded one one of the banks of the river hence the name. I really like this resturant because i like the decorations.
Last entry on the entertainment menu was a stop at the sportsbar "Pitcher's" for some more refreshments and most of us decided to go, while some were still fighting some colds and generally being tired from the traveling.
Here endeth the second day.
Hm. wrote a blog entry in one hour and twenty minutes. Think im starting to get a hang of this!
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