Inspiration Elevator (eng)

The Inspiration Elevator partnership comprises organisations from Norway, Austria, Bulgaria and Croatia. The starting point of our joint effort is supporting youth workers in introducing, organizing and implementing design thinking processes in their daily interventions with youth at risk, which will enhance youth employability and employment prospects.

In many cases, employment support interventions targeting youth at risk have temporary effect (Piqué, M. Angels, 2015) and rather lead to short-term employment only.

In our work with young learners and clients we often notice that most of our efforts are focused on the provision of basic skills. In other words, we try to provide young persons with “instruments” to operate successfully in life. While skills development is a crucial factor for success, it also needs to be accompanied with building the right set of attitudes, so to be able to apply these skills in the best and sustained manner. Stepping on this premise we have realized one of the limitations of current youth in risk training programmes in our countries, i.e. they don‘t fully address the psychological consequences of being at risk such as low self-esteem and decreased drive for achievement and initiative and the need to build strong growth mindsets of learners.

The COVID-19 unprecedented crisis on all levels would place youth in risk in our countries and across Europe in even more unfavorable situation, which would require strong resilient

aptitude to handle all unpredictable challenges to come. We are determined to develop outputs that will contribute to building this resilience.

Inspiration Elevator creates conditions for improved employability chances of young people at risk.

Our objectives are:

• design and develop a Methodological Manual for youth workers and a Coach App on how to embed design thinking as a horizontal activity in their daily training and support work with youth at risk to help them re-/enter the labour market
• piloting the developed outputs