Tuesday, March 23

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!

Digesting thoughts...

This won't be the big post about today's events, but rather thoughts that are storming through my brain as i just live through this event.

The hardest part writing thoughts is that thoughts are always in motion and i see Communicare as just that: something that's always in motion or motivating youth not to stand still but go out and do something.

As i participated on the second day i noticed that more and more took the opportunity to ask me how communicare works, and what communicare does for us who attend. Trying to answer their questions as accurate as possible actually helped me to realise my realities and my position in life. i know now, the second day of five, that this week will mostl likely change my life from now on.

I got a chance to present this blog to the seminar attendees (argh, my english!) and i got a response i wasnt expecting. People started asking if we can put up pictures from the facebook group and adding the powerpoint presentations as links for people to download from.

Awsome ideas of course, and it's what I've studied to solve. But in the back of my head i feel that old fear creeping "better get this right or else!". but i have to overcome it and see it as opportunities to grow stronger. this sounds harder than it is actually. the images wasn't hard to solve at all, the presentations might take another day or so, but wont be a problem. It will all come down to if we can get some server space on the communicare webhotel, or if i ask a friend of mine to use his. As long as i get a space to store the files, i can then link to them in the blog with ease.

So, what has this day brought me personally? That's what this entry is all about actually. The answer is that i've realised things about myself.

Before these events i knew i was a webdeveloper/programmer, and that i like working with web-related issues. i knew i was a social person and i was confident in my english.

After only two days i've realised i want to visit the world, I have no problem speaking infront of people. Actually i like it so much that I'm thinking that it might lead to a form of work. I could hold seminars, maybe with youths, teaching people computers, talking about being unemployed or presenting products. I'm not afraid of moving from karlstad anymore. It's gone so far as to i'm positive to the thought of moving to another country, or work as an ambassador, or as a contact for international questions, or holding seminars/visiting seminars. The posibilities are endless.

I would like to be a few years younger, maybe take some language courses and maybe work as an interpreter.

It's so much that has changed for me that if i try to wrap my head around it all, i'll fall over unconscious and miss tonight's party at the boat, and we can't have that now, can we?

I'm feeling a force pulling at my hips, and the horizon is bright. I just got to find out where it leads.

Monday, march 22

It's finally here!

It's finally time for the seminar about youth unemployment in europe. It's being hosted by Communicare in Karlstad and I, Jonas Peltomäki, will be attending not only as an unemployed youth but also as a participant. These blog entries are my own reflections and thoughts and what i got out of it. this is also availabel through finding European Youth Unemployment Seminar 2010 on facebook.

Monday was of course the big day. The exciting day where we get to meet everyone. We started of with a little excercise to get to know each other and i think it went smooth. Everyone was very friendly and played along. My first reflection was that this would never have worked with an all-swedish crowd. We swedes tend to care an awful lot about not making a fool out of ourselves, and i found the open-minded people i met to be very refreshing and motivating. Mathias guided us into this big week smoothly.

Mrs. Ingela Wretling, the representative for Karlstad municipality, presents Karlstads actions to help youths to epmployement. Some of the actions taken are funding spent specifically to help youths in the age of eighteen to twentyfour. She also spoke of the system where we send the youths to work alongside employees to learn the ropes of their future employment.

After that Mathias continues to talk about the seminar's background and also Communicare. He finishes by going through the plans for the week.

During the coffeebreaks and some of the excercises to mingle and get to know eachother I get the chance to talk to the other participants. I of course grow fond of the UK and especially the scotts. It is definatly a top five dialect of the english language when it comes to character. We talked about some similarities between swedish and UK unemployment situations and i tried to give them as complete a picture as i was able. I also got several chances to speak to the others, and the flavour of the italians with their signature body language brings warmth to the room.

The lunch was great and it was very good that the museum restaurant actually had traditional swedish food alongside other dishes because alot of the participants where eager to try them out. The general discussion at the table, with influenses of italy, Greece and UK, were about different cultures, eating habits and social systems at work in different countries.

After lunch we were asked to write post-its about what our expectations would be of the week at hand.

I got the sense that we all had very similar expectations and worries. The expectations were about learning from other countries and staying open-minded and letting oneself be inspired by other's efforts to fight unemplyment.

Our worries where also similar in that we didn't want to get misinterpreted in our communication.

The Swedish national employment office took the stage presenting their view on the swedish unemployment situation. I say their view because i didnt fully agree on it. Don't get me wrong, its not that they don't try, but they don't have the opportunities or the resources as Communicare (and other similar organisations) has, which often leads to youths feeling forgotten or not worth a penny.

One good point was the dreaded near future of alot of the swedish work force going into retirement. It is a very real problem because these jobs arent being filled by the youths and this will lead to less tax-income, which will rupture the swedish economy quite abit (my alck of economics degree keeps me from holding a minor seminar as to how this could unfold).

He talked about how the work sector and the education sector have a mismatch in the graduates and the available jobs, showing lack in doctors and industrial jobs but a high graduation in computer science for example.

He also took the time to show us the website where swedish unemployed people get to search for jobs advertised by both the public and the private sector. The important part here i think is that its not the law for companies to advertise through this media about vacant jobs.

As an unemployed young thirty-year-old youth myself i often get the feeling that companies posting their jobs through this media can sometimes be the same as lowering standards on what kind of employee they'd want for their company. Far from everyone has this view but compared to this one media i know i have easily five other similar sites i use to look for work.

My own contribution to this will most likely be that even tho the emplyment office really try to help youths we tend to have to investigate our own job market, especially if we have a more narrow job preference. I myself am trying to find jobs within web development (which is a small piece of the hefty cake of IT) and my contact at the employment office said flat out "well, im not that good at your particular area, but i'll do what i can". This is fully understandable of course. You can't really demand that one person should be fully aware of over a hundred different job markets to satisfy the many youths they talk to.

The day continues with each country describing their unemployment situation and their efforts to fight for the youths. I found that everyone had at least one point very similar to Sweden, and several had even more points similar.

Bulgaria showed similarities in mismatch of graduates and available jobs and the disparities between genders. The army was a big help in providing work but weapon's manufacturing will sonn be closed down which will bring about problems i'm sure.

I was also impressed when the UK described their different programs to help out. It felt like they had more programs than sweden and that they were ahead of us when it came to identifying which skills the youths needed to strengthen to get employment. Even tho this sounds great they did have problems with funding for the youths both for living quarters and educationional opportunities.

Italy showed us a different picture. What i took with me from them was their amount of "black work", ie work not showing as employment. Their program looks promising tho and they were positive of their future. I liked how he spoke of the information centers helping youths to employment were sitting in at the discussion with the employer.

Here endeth the day.

I will finish off this entry by saying that the events at the dinner was hilarious. I had a blast and im sure I'm gonna have alot of new very dear friends in my heart after this week.