Empowering youth for tomorrow’s employment through hands-on capacity building through empowered educators
Twelve youth workers spent five days in Vilnius testing the EASY toolbox — from goal-setting and LinkedIn and Europass profiles to interview practice and a youth mentoring action plan.
Youth unemployment remains one of the EU’s biggest challenges — made harder by digital transformation, the pandemic, recent inflation and the war on the EU’s border. The Emerging Advanced Skills Youth (EASY) project tackles the mismatch between the skills young people have and the skills the labour market needs.
The reskilling challenge in numbers
The World Economic Forum paints a striking picture: if the world’s workforce were 100 people, 59 of them would need training by 2030.
- 29 could be upskilled in their current roles
- 19 could be retrained and redeployed within their organisation
- 11 would be unlikely to receive the reskilling or upskilling they need — putting their jobs at risk
The skills employers will ask for
The WEF’s Future of Jobs research names ten skills expected to be most in demand by 2025:
- Complex problem solving
- Critical thinking and analysis
- Creativity, originality and initiative
- Leadership and social influence
- Technology use, monitoring and control
- Technology design and programming
- Resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility
- Emotional intelligence
- Cultural competence
- Interpersonal skills
What EASY sets out to do
EASY builds its training around these skills to improve employability, especially for young people in rural and marginalised communities. The upskilling programme combines online courses, transnational bootcamps and hands-on training, giving young people practical tools and emerging skills for a fast-changing job market.
Five days in Vilnius
From 5 to 9 May, twelve youth workers met in Vilnius, Lithuania, to test the project’s toolbox and training library, developed by five partners: IASIS, Institutul Bucovina, WIPSEE, EPEKA and TavoEUROPA. Each partner led one day of creative workshops on employability skills, opportunities and challenges in Europe, professional profiles on Europass and LinkedIn, interviews, self-presentation and self-reflection.
Day 1 — Teamwork and emerging skills
The week opened with an icebreaker: together, participants tilted a large perforated sheet to roll a ball from circle 1 to circle 18 without dropping it — a lesson in communication, trust and cooperation. In WIPSEE’s workshop, groups sorted jobs by high, medium and low demand, then matched three emerging skills to the jobs where they matter most, showing how one skill travels across many fields. The rest of the day explored the key competences young people need to find work in the EU.
Day 2 — Goals, profiles and interviews
Participants set SMART goals — specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound — and rated their confidence from 1 to 5 in three skills they already had and three they wanted to develop. The exercise showed how easily we overestimate what we know about a skill.
They compared LinkedIn and Europass, noting LinkedIn’s strength for networking but its gaps for rural jobs and creative or artistic fields, and spent twenty minutes writing a compelling LinkedIn bio. WIPSEE introduced the ESCO skills pillar — Europe’s classification of skills and competences, which shows what employers look for and how a person’s skills match jobs and training. The day closed with mock interviews.
Day 3 — Identity, balance and inspiration
An identity map helped participants look beyond their job or studies to their roles, values, strengths and passions. In groups of three, a three-card activity — a personal-growth voice, a job-focused voice and the self in between — explored how to balance career and personal development.
The group then visited the ISM Career Center, which supports students with career guidance throughout their studies, and Kurk Lietuvai (Create Lithuania), a government programme launched in 2012 that brings internationally experienced professionals into public institutions for 12-month strategic projects on innovation, governance and social policy.
Day 4 — Empathy and inclusion
Using empathy maps, participants considered what young people think, feel, say and do — and how best to support them. Groups worked through fictional profiles of young people facing personal challenges, then planned an inclusive, safe and culturally respectful event for diverse minority and ethnic communities. The day ended with individual reflection on energisers, energy drainers and motivation.
Day 5 — From learning to action
On the final day, each group of three built a youth-mentoring action plan using simple, practical tools, and presented its reflections and outcomes.
What we take away
The training was as much about self-awareness, reflection and empathy as about the toolbox itself — and it showed once more why upskilling matters today. The tools will soon be available on the project website.
Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the granting authority. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.