From 20th to 23th November 2017 in Sofia the first training for NEETs under the COMP-Pass project was held.
It turned out that despite the numerous preliminary contacts, meetings and conversations for explaining the nature of the content and benefits of such training for the target group, very few of the previously confirmed participants came and attended the training. The training started with seven, but ended with 6 people. Some of them were from a minority ethnic group outside the capital living in small remote area. After overcoming the initial surge and disturbance, the training went in ascending order. Already during the training, fulfilling the various assignments, almost all of the participants found in themselves hidden talents and opportunities for place themselves at the labor market. The online platform has generated interest in form and content, but has also raised interesting issues, mainly related to the availability of an employer database and real job opportunities. Various variants and ideas for the preparation of videos, techniques, possible scenarios, the use of ready-made animated applications were demonstrated.
What we received as a result of this training. We deliberately failed to fill in the online platform data of all participants to check their true interest. Naturally, most of the photos and documents that were to be added and added value to the CV were missing. We faced the two extremes, as they were observed in both minority and majority ethnical groups by duly filling in dates and data, exact names, jobs, and even film scenarios, to complete indifference. It was quite disappointing to us that the participants were not interested in their problems connected with origin and geographic difficulties, but generally confirms the widespread thesis of this minority - low motivation to learn and acquire additional qualifications and to seek a permanent job. Practical life-long actors in the shadow economy, often relying on the social policy of the state, or looking for the benefits of such policies in other countries.
All these lessons we decided to use in our favor in the selection of the participants in the second training, which took place at the end of March 26-30 in Sofia. We stopped at students who graduated from good schools in Sofia and Plovdiv but did not continue to study or work. As a result, another value system, another understanding of one's own self, and all other expectations and financial reward, and curricula in the next phase of his training. Much of them with the acquired knowledge and skills temporarily find an interesting job for them, providing them with money for a certain period of time and shaping the cyclicity of NEET's existence. Techniques of working with PS and camera were of course quite different, as well as the technique they had. A much bigger and more interesting challenge was the storylines and possible ways of realization of the video materials than the group work by identifying hidden or underestimated skills. Unlike the first group, YouTube's discreet knowledge was high and did not raise questions about public use. However, the issue of the real value of the e-portfolio in a Bulgarian version, without a section for employers, its usefulness, applicability and counter-effect for eventual finding of a job, was discussed with even greater force.
Finally, against the backdrop of the constantly falling unemployment rate in Bulgaria, the percentage of unemployed young people and some of them NEETs remains the same in absolute terms. Due to legislative loopholes, many of them are active participants in the shadow economy, in some cases highly qualified and valuable work, sometimes exercised from home, or using seasonal or temporary labor migration in countries with a higher standard. The target group is difficult to access as a whole, sometimes the problem is a shame of origin, a lack of education, prejudices or just laziness due to the country-specific psychopsychology of "guardian parents and helpers to the grave". There is also the other extreme highly educated, with abundant skills, possibly overestimating, which often leads them to participate in highly technological international criminal structures - hacking, banking and stock market fraud, where the financial benefit is not the first, but the self-demonstration.
The general opinion of our team is that learning would have a much greater effect if it "gets" in some form in the final classes of formal education, in the experience of hidden skills not only being discovered, but also becoming a direction for future education or labor realization. Training is rather a prevention of NEETs, not a therapy afterwards, when they are already in some form of isolation and difficult to contact. On the other hand, in the correct selection of different exercises in it can be used in other age groups and other purposes.