We train for the future!We train for the future!

We are: YMCA (Young Minds Create Alternatives )We come from : Romania

The problem

Unemployment Rate in Romania decreased to 6.90 percent in the second quarter of 2012 from 7.60 percent in the first quarter of 2012. Historically, from 2006 until 2012, Romania Unemployment Rate averaged 6.8 Percent reaching an all time high of 8.1 Percent in March of 2010 and a record low of 5.4 Percent in September of 2008. In Romania, the unemployment rate measures the number of people actively looking for a job as a percentage of the labour force. ( From the Romanian National Institute of Statistics)

We believe this is a real problem to our country that, for now lacks any solution whatsoever. There is a quite obvious tendency of brain drain, people are leaving the country for the better paid jobs in the Western Europe.

In order to find more relevant results in our community, we’ve conducted an experiment by asking students in our city a short questionnaire regarding the unemployment and what are the causes in their opinion. After reaching our target of  100 students and reviewing the results, our conclusion was clear: students lack experience (more than 70% responded in this way) and also the fact that Universities either don’t offer enough knowledge required for obtaining a job nor the practical part.

Students feel unprepared to deal with the demands of a regular job. One of the things that matter the most for them is how well positioned on the market is the specific job, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that it is more important than their passion. In our vision, the companies focus too much on experience, without actually offering any opportunities to in this direction. They don’t seem to know how to act during an interview or in other work-life given situation, thus decreasing their chances of having any short-term realization in this field.

The solution

Our solution means to motivate the students, the teachers and the companies to engage in this change that we plan on making. Basically, the problem of most students is the lack of experience, so we are thinking of going to the core of the problem, for us to actually have relevant results.As you could see in the former slides, our study has shown most students choose their University out of passion for the domain in which they engage so lack of passion wouldn’t be a problem

In the first stage we try to solve the following issue: the Universities of Romania don’t offer enough opportunities and they don’t know how to motivate students because they have old-fashioned teaching techniques.To solve this issue we thought of training sessions, to make the teachers understand that times have changed and that teaching methods should change to better engage the students in class and encouraging them to search for extra-curricular activities as well.

The second stage is that the Universities should have contracts with a couple of companies that would be willing to offer two things: employees that would come 2 hours per week and have an optional course in which they would tell students what it’s like to have the responsibility of the job, tell them what their daily work implies, what the departments truly do and last but not least, tips and tricks to prepare them for their first interview.

The third stage of our project would imply convincing firms to offer a “career week” in which groups of students could go to the company as guests and shadow the departments in which they would like to work to be able to get a hands-on approach upon the issue and see if the domain they chose is really what they expect it to be.

On it's first edition,  we are thinking on spending 20h per week during the whole school year. Also, in order for the project to take shape, human resource will be needed.  We estimate engaging 20 to 30 youngsters.

The success will be evaluated by judging if we have reached at least one quarter of the students from the Universities engaged in the project.

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