- Last year, the Barcelona Youth Employment Promotion Plan (2020-2023) came to an end. What is your assessment of it?
This Plan was drawn up in 2020 to respond to the situation generated by the pandemic, which had a particularly strong impact on youth employment. Barcelona Activa led the project, and the actions were implemented together with the Youth Department of Barcelona City Council, the Barcelona Education Consortium, and the Barcelona FP Foundation, with the participation of the members of the Youth Employment Table. During this period, more than 250 actions were deployed, with a clear focus on assessment, guidance, and support services, with a budget of €45.1M. Our assessment is very positive, as we have consolidated a wide range of occupational and training services for young people that are deployed in a coordinated and complementary manner. Outstanding actions include the launch of the new Youth Employment Service and El Convent de Barcelona Activa as a benchmark facility for the city’s young people who are in the process of transitioning into the world of work.
- How has the number of young people who are neither studying nor working in the city of Barcelona evolved in recent years?
The number of NEET young people in Barcelona is significant. A study by the BCN Vocational Training Foundation* estimates that there are almost 15,000 unemployed young people in the city without post-compulsory education. Therefore, one in four young people under the age of 24 is in this situation. The areas with the highest incidence are the districts of Nou Barris and Ciutat Vella, where more than 20% of young people have neither a job nor post-compulsory studies. In view of this data, the study proposes recommendations such as the possibility of early identification of signs of school dropout, as well as the dualization of training and the design of training itineraries more closely aligned with the needs of the labor market, among others. The lack of qualifications in this group of young people requires compensatory measures, among which Barcelona Activa has programs such as Garantia d’Èxit BCN and Oportunitats als Mercats Municipals, which offer personalized guidance and professional training itineraries with the aim of facilitating labor insertion through professional qualification or a return to the educational system.
- Do you plan to promote a new youth employment promotion plan for the coming years? What are the challenges? What measures should it include to address them?
The integration of young people into the labor market is a priority for Barcelona Activa. To work toward this goal, we have the new Quality Youth Employment Plan (POJQ) 2024-2030, framed within the Barcelona Agreement for Quality Employment (ABOQ). The new Plan presents some of the challenges identified at the city level for improving the quality of access to the market and the working conditions of young people, such as reducing the rates of early school and training dropout, decreasing the number of involuntarily inactive young people, improving accreditation and recognition processes, promoting the incorporation of recent graduates into the labor market, adapting occupational actions to the transformations surrounding us, as well as consolidating a guidance model in which assessment and support for professional vocations and lifelong learning are present at all times. To respond, preventive measures must be applied to address educational inequalities, the mismatch between supply and demand, and the lack of guidance.
Once again, in addition to the public agents of the employment ecosystem, we are adding the main social and economic agents of the city, under the perspective of consultation and co-responsibility to deploy actions that respond while taking into account the different realities of the city’s territories.
- El Convent is Barcelona Activa’s new benchmark facility for young people. What is the profile of the young people who come to this facility? What are their needs? What services do you offer them?
El Convent is aimed at young people and organizations in the city to promote vocational and professional guidance, access to the labor market, and professional improvement. Thus, we offer services to all young people in the city between the ages of 16 and 29, regardless of their educational level or employment status. The profile of the young person served by El Convent’s services is a male under 25 with secondary education, unemployed, and residing in the neighborhoods of Nou Barris, Sants-Montjuïc, and Sant Martí, coinciding with the districts with the highest unemployment in the city.
El Convent’s service portfolio offers three levels of care depending on the intensity of intervention and the profile and needs of the young person. The first level is initial care—without an appointment—and allows for the request to be specified and referred to the most appropriate Barcelona Activa or city resources. At a second level, the guidance team specialized in youth employability will provide advice and, if necessary, provide follow-up support through an action plan agreed upon by the counselor and the young person.
Identifying professional goals for those young people with little work experience or who are looking for their first job, professional training, knowledge of strategies, tools, and channels for job searching, connecting with companies in the sector, access to offers, and the use of networks for job searching are the main demands of the young people at El Convent’s Youth Employment Service.
- Our motto is “I am what I want to be.” And you, are you?
The motto of El Convent is
Believe in you; surely between the two
claims, we could easily create a highly motivating phrase for those young people who are at the point of making a decision about studies or training while looking toward an occupation, where they want to be. I join the “I am what I want to be” movement. I define myself as an enthusiast of my work. Being part of professional teams where the sum of knowledge and skills allows us to conceptualize, design, implement, evaluate, and start again… taking into account the transformations of the context, such as the impact of the application of AI in services to support young people in moments of transition between school and work, in guidance processes, in improving their professional profile, or in job searching, is highly motivating and stimulating. It is having the opportunity to be part of building their professional life project, not only for the young people who will be our future, but for those who are already our present.
*BCNFP Foundation & CES Report (2004): “Unemployed young population aged 16 to 24 without post-compulsory studies”
