7 min.
Thanks to Programme YouthSpark, Microsoft and the Fondazione Mondo Digitale, the Fondazione Cariplo and CNCA will implement training and entrepreneurial projects to help youth enter the job market.
These are the 3 Italian organizations that will receive support from the Microsoft Corporation through YouthSpark for 2012. Youthspark is a global initiative launched by Microsoft last September to create new opportunities in training, employment and entrepreneurship. Projects will be developed in these three areas to help young Italians develop the skills necessary on the job market and find new professional opportunities. Moreover, these three initiatives fit in with Microsoft Italy’s three-year plan to provide technology, competences and know-how to support development and innovation in Italy. Representatives of these three ogranisations met today in Rome with Eric Boustouller, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Corporation and Area Vice President, Microsoft Western Europe to launch the projects.
"The objective of Microsoft Youthspark is to help the 300 million youth around the world to make their dreams come true. We have decided to focus our efforts and resources to provide young people with new training, employment and entrepreneurial opportunities, explained Eric Boustouller, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Corporation and Area Vice President, Microsoft Western Europe. “We believe that contributing to solve the problems faced by youth today is one of the most important actions to ensure the future of this generation and consequently the future of the global economy. It is necessary to involve institutions and non-profit agencies and collaborate to provide youth with concrete opportunities.”
The global YouthSpark Programme has recently evaluated the best projects from around the world aiming to create new opportunities for youth.
The projects selected in Italy address various targets, but all aim to provide everyone with a concrete opportunity to develop their full potential through training and job insertion on a series of different levels:
• Disadvantaged youth - basic computer skills;
• High school and university students – last generation technology training courses for the development of the professional competences required on the job market;
• Youth with university diplomas (or about to receive one) – specific entrepreneurial.
The following projects were selected:
1. “Giovani & lavoro. IT fattore abilitante” with CNCA
This project addresses 3000 young people aged 16-28 looking for a job. The objective is to help them increase their computer skills as well as social and professional competences via ad hoc workshops. The project is divided into three stages. The first concerns the Microsoft digital literacy courses that cover PC usage basics to word processing, spreadsheets, web navigation and e-mail. The second stage concerns work education courses developed by the Fondazione Adecco for Equal Opportunities: CV preparations, job search strategies and job interview skills. Finally, the third stage addresses work in the profit and non-profit sectors with internships in companies to experiment enterprise projects and local operations. Youth who decide to start up their own enterprises will receive the necessary tools from CNCA.
2. “Meet no Neet” with the Fondazione Mondo Digitale
The project aims to provide 6000 youth aged 18-24 with a training programme on innovative tools and competences to help them access the job market via social commitment. The training programme is flexible to allow participants to access it from anywhere: video lessons and tutorials with Microsoft experts on last generation software, classroom training and local laboratories to provide youth with the tools necessary to develop social innovation projects, projects aiming to provide solutions to unanswered social needs. Participants will have to identify a problem present in their daily life – in school, in the neighbourhood, in the city – and propose a solution in collaboration with agencies, associations and companies to contribute to its solution. The 20 best projects will be selected and presented during an event at which the winners will be presented with a “Passport of 21st Century Competences”.
3. “Start-up Revolutionary Road” with Fondazione Cariplo
This is an initiative that has been designed to provide concrete opportunities to thousands of young Italians who will be able to enjoy ad hoc training and mentoring activities. Microsoft and the Fondazione Cariplo in collaboration will coordinate the project with selected partners who will be in charge of training activities. Young participants will be able to improve their ICT and managerial competences and will be aided in the definition of their business ideas. At the end of the course, they will be able to launch their own start-up and participate in Microsoft’s BizSpark Programme to access cutting edge technology for their new enterprise.
“The precarious job market for young people is one of the most evident symptoms of the serious economic crisis,” explains Armando Zappolini, Presidente of CNCA – Coordinamento Nazionale Comunità di Accoglienza. The federation brings together nearly 250 Italian addressing issues, marginalization and the promotion of social well being. “Their present is characterized by uncertainty and abandonment; their future is hard to make out. This is why it is more important than ever before to support their competences for autonomy, their presence in the local context and their communities. The heterogeneous nature of CNCA groups - their thirty-year-long experience in the social and educational arena, their work with different youth issues (habits, unease, penal, immigration, aggregation, citizenship, culture, creativity, …) as well as the certainty that equipping youth with the tool necessary to pursue their personal and social life is today one of the foremost priorities for those who care and operate in education - surely represents a factor of efficiency and positive impact for the project.”
"The Fondazione Mondo Digitale works to make youth the protagonists of their own future and guarantee their acquisition of the competences that are necessary to live and work in the 21st Century. Project Meet No Neet is an important milestone towards this goal. It is a privilege to share this opportunity with Microsoft and continue to promote knowledge as the motor for social development", explained Mirta Michilli, Director General, Fondazione Mondo Digitale.
“We constantly read on the main national dailies that, in order to create value for a country and leave the crisis behind us, we must invest in two main areas: the young generations, who represent our future, and innovative enterprises, research-intensive organizations capable of developing new technological paradigms. I strongly believe in this initiative – shared and co-financed by the Fondazione Cariplo together with top-tier partner Microsoft. I believe it will represent a true opportunity to reinforce the technological competences of 25,000 young individuals involved in the project and incentivize entrepreneurial undertakings and start-ups.” Giuseppe Guzzetti, President, Fondazione Cariplo.
“Microsoft has always strived to support youth to develop new competences, new ideas and work opportunities through technology. Youthspark is a global programme that provides local operators such as the Fondazione Mondo Digitale, the Fondazione Cariplo and CNCA with the opportunity to help youth with the right tools. These initiatives allow us to concretely help both youth and the entire country to grow,” explained Roberta Cocco, Social Responsibility Director, Microsoft Italy. “Youthspark is an opportunity to step up the commitment of Microsoft Italy on these issues and strengthen our relations with NGOs, institutions and partners.”
