info@bioyouth.org
About Bioyouth Project
Needs
The bioeconomy encompasses all sectors and systems that depend on biological resources. Their functions, interaction between production circles and functions of the biomaterial also covered by the term. To be succeed in targets concerning Bioeconomy, the Europe must be sustainable and circular on all along production chain. This will stimulate the renewal of conventional industry, the modernization of essential production systems, the protection of the nature and increasing biodiversity. According to the EU commission and published report by Joint Research Centre, the estimation for the EU-28 Bioeconomy is about 2.3 Trillion Euro, together with tertiary sectors. Besides, the European Commission has set a long-term goal to develop a competitive and transition to a resource efficient and low carbon economy by 2050.
This strategy highly depends on well-functioning and steadily expanding Bioeconomy since it plays an important role in the low carbon economy. Also, a sustainable and circular bioeconomy may open up new opportunities for many transition economies in line with developing green financial mechanisms, despite many challenges associated with strict EU targets. In line with the long term goals, increasingly much effort addresses better integration of younger generations, up to 30 years old, into the Bioeconomy and tertiary sectors. YOUTH is essential for refreshing and innovation in the field. Positive influence of younger generation in the field is required for targeted transition (from fossil based) towards biobased society. However, bridging the knowledge gap between generations and approaches for attracting youth awareness on transition are lacking. With regards to this fact, some activities and training programs have started to be organized recently in order to tackling challenges of youth participation in Biobased production sectors. In addition to the economic size of the bioeconomy and its rising share in the GDPs, contribution of the bioeconomy to total employment is also an important indicator to estimate its function in labour market. The EU bioeconomy employed 17.5 million people in 2017 (EU-27), which represents 8.9% of the total labour force. In the US, current bioeconomy is estimated to have directly generated more than 285,000 jobs. Even by conservative estimates, this could expand by a factor of five to contribute more than 1.1 million jobs to the U.S. economy by 2030. Obviously, it cannot be achieved without involvement of younger generations in the sector. A framework should be developed to assist youth in understanding careers, available education or training ensuring advancement bioenergy industry. Youth needs to explore bioeconomy networks and innovations, potential career pathways and identifying training needs for each career position. Thus, the primary goal of this project is; to improve the capacities of the “worker of youth centers” in bioeconomics. Increased capacity will ensure that “the workers guide the youth towards career opportunities and the training programs needed in the field”. The objectives of the project are 1)to outline some occupational profiles in Bioeconomy field, hence, youth identifies their training needs, 2) raising awareness of youth on potential career pathways, current networks and innovation in sector 3)developing training content and some useful tools for youth workers.
Objectives
It is very important to consider the European perspective in this partnership. The European Union is very persistent in tackling climate change and transitioning to circular bioeconomic policies. The pace of development of this sector is dizzying. The EU Bioeconomy strategy has 5 goals; 1-ensure food and nutrition security, 2-manage natural resources, 3-sustainably reduce dependence on non-renewable, unsustainable resources, 4-limit and adapt to climate change and 5-strengthen European competitiveness and create jobs. The strategy contributes to the European Green Deal, as well as
industrial, circular economy and clean energy innovation strategies. They all highlight the importance of a sustainable, circular bioeconomy to achieve their objectives. The strategy is implemented by means of an action plan. Action plan foresees deploying local bioeconomies rapidly across the whole of Europe. Enhancing knowledge, promoting education, training and skills across the bioeconomy are inevitable parts of the action plan. Accordingly, this cooperation partnership serves for the local bioeconomy actions and ultimately the EU strategy. This cooperation partnership brings together the participating organizations selected in line with the project objectives in a complementary manner. The objectives are increasing youth workers’ capacity on bioeconomy, youth generation’s inclusion in local and EU actions, accelerated growth pace of practices, meeting new skills standard emerged with the new sectors. The labor force participation rates of young people (15-24) at the global level show a decreasing trend. According to the Global Trends in Youth Employment report published by ILO in March 2020, although the youth population increased from 1 billion to 1.3 billion in1999-2019, the number of young people in active labor markets decreased from 568 million to 497 million. Youth unemployment in Turkey is following a growing trend. Moreover, pandemic conditions raised the unemployment rate in this group considerably. In this respect, guiding young people to appropriate career paths consistent with global development policies is, in order to overcome their skill shortages, quite vital. This cooperation partnership attempts to achieve this goal in a systematic and sustainable manner, through existing national umbrella organization, while increasing the capacity of National Youth Institutions. To conclude, this transnational project proposal firstly aims to transform the main lines of the policy framework formed in Europe into a structure that can be adopted by young generations. Transnational cooperation is essential in order to explain the background of the established policies. There are also invaluable opportunities for young people due to the need for rapid development in these areas. These opportunities, skills and qualification titles of new occupational profiles can be better determined in a transnational framework since relevant industry has been partly developed in Europe. Rising awareness, knowledge and skills among youth on Biobased products ends up with facilitated free movement of future labour.
Activities
As it is mentioned on different section of the proposal, the primary goal of this project is; to improve the capacities of the “worker of youth centers” in Bio-economics. The objectives of the project are; 1) to outline some occupational profiles in Bio-Based economy field, hence, youth identifies their training needs, 2) raising awareness of youth on potential career pathways, current networks and innovation in sector 3)developing training content and some useful tools for youth workers. To achieve main goal and associated objectives, the BIO-YOUTH projects organizes a number of actions such as; -Transnational Project Meetings (5 TPMs), -a Training Activity (C1) and -a Multiplier event (E1) for better understanding of the stakeholders next to other dissemination activities. Moreover, BIO-YOUTH Project has planned to produce 5 outcome/deliverable to be used by the target audiences, as it follows, Output 1-Training Content on Bio-based Economy for Youth Workers Output 2- Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for Youth Workers on Bio-based Economy Output 3- New Skills and Competences of the Bio-based Industries Output 4- Attractive/Featured Business Cases in BioBased Industries Output 5- Youth Worker's Bio-Based Economy TOOL Box Accordingly, there is consistency between the objectives of the project and the planned actions. The BIO-YOUTH project has planned a systematic series of actions to increase the capacity of youth workers. First, a suitable educational content is developed and then this content is served to the target audience through an open access platform (OUTPUT 1 and 2). For the development of this content, Quality Assurance rules adopted by the European Union will be applied. In accordance with the Quality Assurance Methodology, the developed content and online application will be tested, any mistake will be debugged and deficiencies will be eliminated. The effectiveness of these tools will be determined by pre and post tests. The BIO-YOUTH project has also planned a face-to-face training activity for youth workers who show high performance during training activities (C 1).
The determined number of individuals will have the opportunity to get to know the networks in Europe closely in this training, which will be face to face, and will examine some of the prominent examples of the bio-based industry. These activities are unique experiences that will improve the quality of “understanding”, which is the last step of enhancing capacity of the target audience. On the other hand, the BIO-YOUTH project has planned to produce a series of materials that youth workers, whose competence has been increased, will apply in Workshop and Club work with young individuals (OUTPUT 3,4,5). These project products help young people to understand the profile of employees in the industry in question, skills gaps, and educational opportunities addressing this need. As a result, all products of the BIO-YOUTH project are systematically complementary to each other. The BIO-YOUTH project has taken all appropriate measures for a participatory management approach, a high level of communication between partners, periodical contacts and quality assurance. For this purpose, the project management board and executive committee are formed, and decision-making and communication protocol are determined. Legally, there is sufficient awareness of the written agreements that should be between the partners / parties. The partners' previous experience with EU programs is an important factor that reduces the risks for implementation. The BIO-YOUTH project also has an effective strategy for dissemination, consistent with the project scale. This strategy starts with a comprehensive stakeholder analysis. According to the level of relevance determined, the BIO-YOUTH project aims to reach all stakeholders through different dissemination tools. The program structure applied allows for the planned dissemination activities.
Results
The Ministry of Youth and Sports has youth centers coordinated by the General Directorate of Youth Services. Youth Centers has numerous functions; helping young people to spend their leisure time, directing young people to social, cultural, artistic, scientific and sports activities, supporting personal, social and spiritual development of young people, providing guidance and counseling, raising awareness of young people against smoking and drugs and enabling young people to gain social skills through participating in various activities. These domestic centers carry out various activities and organize historical and cultural trips, camps and sports activities, in line with the mission. Youth Centers Academy, on the other hand, includes theoretical workshops in which team spirit and active participation are emphasized in all areas of life. The theoretical dimension in these workshops is enriched by using various applied methods, especially “nonformal education techniques”, in order to enable young people to use knowledge in life. Workshops is not a one-way communication and ensure participatory training approach in the academy. It is essential to organize workshops in which young people will actively participate and different ways of thinking about the field will be developed. There are several workshops in the Youth Centers Academy that can be associated with the project subject, Bio-Based Economy. These workshops are Values, Personal Development, Innovation, Science and Technology. In particular, personal development workshop in the Academy provides career planning guidance. Youth workers conducts training and organizes activities in the workshops of Academy. They are also mentors moderating personal development environment for Youth. For this reason, the BIO-YOUTH project aims to improve the capacity of youth workers in bio-based economics. Hence, the BIOYOUTH project will design a training of trainers (ToT) program for youth workers. Increased capacity will ensure that “the workers guide the youth towards career opportunities and the training programs needed in the field”. There are 4 relevant workshops in the Youth Centers Academy. Sustainable Ethic and Finance will be interactively discussed in values workshop under the moderation of youth workers. Discussions and workshops to be held will provide young people with an objective mindset on the environment and sustainability. Personal Development Workshop in the Youth Academy will consider newly emerging occupational profiles under Bio-economy such as operators in Biofuels, Biodegradable Plastics, Resins, Chemicals, Foods and Food Additives sectors. Youth workers will identify new qualifications associated with most desired Bio-economy fields and career development pathways. Workers also directs youth participants to the available training programs and networks to gain new skills concerning bio-processes. Innovation Science and Technology workshop will raise awareness on Bio-based economy and European transition strategy. Main difference between conventional economy and bio-based economy, natural cycles (water, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen), background information and policy papers will be take into account in these workshops. Additionally, BIO-YOUTH project provides training content and tools (self-evaluation toolkit, games) to the Youth Workers, in which they can deploy workshop studies. For better understanding of Youth Workers, BIO-YOUTH project will be held a training event and this training will ensure active participation of the target group.