Promoting Youth Employment and Social Welfare
Measures to Promote Employment in the Local Area
The close knowledge of labor market performance and integration in the same youth requires increased involvement of local governments and non-governmental entities. Several programs promoted by the European, national, and regional development have been implemented locally.
The Community Initiative Employment and Human Resources
This initiative includes programs like Youthstart and Integra. The first is aimed specifically at young people under 20 years. The second gives room for special actions targeted at disadvantaged youth in terms of personal, economic, or social development. Many of the projects generating employment for youth have been counting on the European Social Fund support through this initiative.
Schools Program and Holiday Crafts Workshop
From the central administration, the Schools Program and Holiday Crafts Workshop have played a major role as an alternative and vocational training. Work and training centers where young unemployed receive occupational training in alternation with professional practice, so that, upon completion, are trained in the proper performance of the learned profession and have easier access to the world of work. Both initiatives aim to link the training and the restoration of the historical, cultural, and natural heritage, becoming increasingly important training associated with local services, cultural services, and entertainment to new technologies.
Training and Work Period
After a training period of 6 months where students receive a training grant, there begins a period of training and work in which students are hired by the project promoter. Trades in Schools for 6 months and in Schools Workshop from 6 to 18 months depending on the duration of the project.
Career Guidance and Job Creation
Services for career guidance and job creation have also been developed, highlighting the Promotion and Development Unit and Integrated Systems Employment pair. With the devolution of power, Autonomous Employment Services have emerged.
The Advancement of Youth Participation in Social Welfare
The work of volunteers contributes to building a more democratic and tolerant society, the proper conduct of the young, and also that of other population groups, particularly the most disadvantaged. Hence, from the various public sectors, the work of youth groups or those who work with youth is encouraged and supported through various measures.
State Law on Volunteering
The State Law on Volunteering 6/1996 of 15 January consolidates the regulatory framework in the field, trying to tackle, as recognized in its preamble, the task of ensuring the freedom of citizens to express their commitment to solidarity through the channels that fit their innermost convictions, to effectively promote and encourage voluntary action in its various forms.
Volunteer Plans
The First Plan was approved for 1997-2000 to contribute to mutual coordination and policy direction of volunteerism. A New Plan for 2001-2004 explores certain aspects and areas (media, elderly, etc.).
Measures within the Volunteer Plan
- Raising Awareness: Providing information to society about the value, opportunity, and need for voluntary participation, both through the dissemination of voluntary activities and the recognition of the work of volunteers, their rights, and duties, counting for it with all stakeholders, especially the media.
- Support for Volunteering: Undertaken by the public sector, private for-profit, and the third sector itself in the modernization of NGOs in this effort to strengthen the human, economic, and material resources, as well as legal organization, in developing its activity.
- Coordination: Strengthening the collaboration and involvement of these actors in national and international structures of cooperation. The exchange of experiences and knowledge, joint document editing, and networking.
Gender Equality and Protection of Women
The Social Construction of Gender
The differences between men and women are not only due to biological reasons. The values, expectations, and roles of society have different roles for women and men.
Women are traditionally socialized to remain in the private sphere (domestic, emotional), they are oriented toward intimacy, inwards, towards the micro-social, to economic dependence, emotional action, and approach. Men, on the contrary, are socialized to progress in the public sphere (work/professional, political, technological), they repress the affective sphere and enhance their talents and ambitions for self-promotion, are oriented toward action, toward the outside, towards economic independence, emotional action, and approach.
Policies to promote equality of opportunity between men and women take into account, first, assessing the role of women in the private sphere. We must consider their important work in the family as welfare agents. They have various roles and each plays several tasks that ensure both the physical and emotional well-being of not only children but also caring for elderly parents or grandchildren when they are young. Profiles have been created for many of them through local services, childcare, home help, etc.