Beyond (un)employment

The programme has been delivered by five Impact Hubs: Birmingham, Florence, Moscow, Yerevan, and Zagreb. Impact Hubs make up a global network of people, places, and programs that inspire, connect and catalyze impact. They build on the believe that change requires collective action. Part innovation lab, part business incubator, and part community center, the100+ Impact Hubs around the world offer their collective 15,000+ members a unique ecosystem of resources, inspiration, and collaboration opportunities to grow impact.

The Impact Hub Zagreb (Croatia) cohort sought to understand through this discovery phase the key drivers, agents, processes and experiences of rapidly growing youth unemployment in their city and across Croatia.

This innovative programme has explored and critically engaged with the reality of persistent local challenges in relation to (un)employment. The lessons drawn fall into two linked areas: firstly, key features of the local (un)employment context; and secondly, findings relating to the distinctive convening processes of this collective learning and solution prototyping programme.
Through their convening the Impact Hubs have created safe spaces for diverse cohorts to forge new connections, question assumptions, engage in learning as a group around their (un)employment challenge, and in doing so develop their capacities to collaborate in the prototyping of interventions to affect change.

They are exploring this challenge in the context of a doubling of unemployment figures in Croatia between 2008 and 2014 (Croatian Bureau of Statistics). Croatia features in the top ten highest unemployment figures in the European Union, and top five highest youth unemployment figures (EUROSTAT). Existing assessments of the situation have pointed to a lack of relevant work experience in the labour pool, with a large mismatch between skills and demand, particularly in relation to business and entrepreneurial skills and aptitudes. There has also been concern relating to an absence of entrepreneurial culture and activity, as well as a ‘prolonged youth phenomenon’ noted by observers. The ‘prolonged youth phenomenon’ is in part explained by young people remaining in the parental family home owing to an absence of employment opportunities, longer periods in higher education, and so a lack of fiscal capacity to live independently.

A new educational approach and curricula is currently in development to try to address youth employment issues that have in part contributed to push migration factors, with young people leaving Croatia to find work elsewhere. The Impact Hub have outlined a need to respond to an absence of employment infrastructure relating to youth work experience, mentoring, and social innovation /enterprise training and support. As part of this programme this cohort have sought to develop a much deeper collective understanding of youth unemployment with the intention of prototyping solutions that help build a tailored and connected ecosystem of support infrastructure. The aspiration is that the support infrastructure will in turn help foster the skills, behaviours, capabilities and connections needed for pathways to employment. In addition, they see this programme as an opportunity to explore ways in which to increase the communication and co-operation between education and employment stakeholders to secure more connected action, (for example in relation to the mismatch between skills/ education and labour market demand).

Read more about this project here.