By Globers
Good practices in the field of entrepreneurship and creation of
opportunities to reduce social and professional exclusion for youngsters to develop their full potential
Youth unemployment rate in Spain is one of the highest in Europe. Lack of
motivation is a serious problem as nowadays; labour market is presenting us different possibilities of employment through different ways of engagement. We believe that one of the possible answers to the present issue of employability is to promote concepts and tools for the development entrepreneurship to a targeted demographic of youth.
One of the main problems addressed here is high percentage of youngsters that are disengaged from the labour market due their lack of ICT skills which are demanded by companies. According to the European Commission ICT jobs demand grows at 4% every year, jeopardizing the EU’s potential for growth and digital competitiveness by
outpacing supply. Nowadays developed economies are moving towards a more fluid, innovation based economy, where a different set of entrepreneurial skills are needed (critical thinking, persistence, adaptability, creativity and initiative). Having this in mind,
our project approach focusses on train youngsters with knowledge and courage to start their entrepreneurship career, by providing an innovative learning model entrepreneurship which will prepare them for precisely what they need when entering the market.
There are social issues currently affecting the society and young people, mainly unemployment and different obstacles which negatively affect employability. Therefore, it is important to offer possible solutions for it and encouraging people to start their own enterprises is one of them. In fact, 75% of young people declared by an internal survey that they do not have any culture related to entrepreneurship. In Spain young people
mistrust their own strengths and leadership skills to access different funds, they need good practice among youth workers and opportunities for sharing know-how to help improve youth work.
Some problems and needs mentioned by youngsters in Catalonia are:
- Potential failure and fear that the way in which the business is going to overwhelm them
- Doubt about the experience of Youth work to support them and their actions considering their low competences in the field
- Lack of integrated programs in youth organizations, which include not only course ‘’3 day project management”, but also information on leadership development, best practices in EU on social business or consultancy after mobilities.
Social entrepreneurship can be a response to these challenges in our region, as it draws upon business techniques to raise additional sources of funding to find committed, possibly longer-term community-based solutions to local problems. This concept may be applied to a variety of organizations of different sizes, aims, and beliefs, including youth organizations.
On an European level, The ‘Youth Guarantee Plan Plus 2021–2027 of decent
work for young people’ serves as a reference to entities linked to the national system of Youth Guarantee in the same period. This plan will enable the European Union released funds intended for youth employment. To achieve the objectives for improving the employability and entrepreneurship for young people, the plan is based on guidance and
follow-up of users are personalized and users in all of the proceedings of support; training to the acquisition of competencies and the improvement of professional experience, taking into account the needs of transformation of productive model; improving employment opportunities through incentives targeted especially to persons who require
special consideration; equality of opportunity; enterprise and entrepreneurship development and improvement of management.
In Spain, freelancers face a series of problems common to those of many micro- enterprises problems that in their case are aggravated by their greater isolation and less access to financial, human and technical resources. Also, the fare that self-employed have to pay every month is very high compared to other countries of Europe such as Portugal,
UK, France, Italy or Germany. The minimum Social Security fee that a self-employed worker in Spain must pay is 294 euros per month. It is 30.6% of your contribution for those who charge the lowest base, of 960.6 euros, according to the provisions of Law 22/2021. But there are some good news for Spanish youngsters in order to develop their
entrepreneur spirit and try it out: the flat rate.
The flat rate for the self-employed consists of starting with a monthly payment of 60 euros to Social Security instead of the 294 euros that constitute the minimum monthly fee in 2022. The requirement to have access to this rate are:
- Register for the first time as self-employed.
- Not having been registered as self-employed in the last two years
- Be registered in a municipality with less than 5,000 inhabitants
- Men under 30 years old and Women under 35 years old
The conditions are:
- First 12 months: fee of 60 euros. Reduction of 80% on the base fee.
- Months 13 to 18: 50% reduction on the base fee.
- Months 19 to 24: 30% reduction on the base fee.
- Months 25 to 36: 30% reduction on the base fee, for new self-employed
workers under 30 years of age and self-employed workers under 35 years of
age.
Finally, regarding Catalonia and specially our village, Roda de Berà, is a very social active region, and this means that the townhall offers many courses and activities for the citizens, both for workers, unemployed and young people. In mid-March 2020, with the start of the state of alarm to deal with the health crisis caused by COVID-19, the
Mediterranean Municipal School for Adults of Roda de Berà had to close its doors. In order to continue offering its users a quality training offer, they published a series of courses that allowed workers and unemployed to improve their professional qualifications during confinement. They offered a total of 35 different courses. Now that the School is open again, they continue offering these courses both online and face-to-face. These courses are divided in 4 big groups: Interpersonal skills or management, Economic and financial and human resources accounting management, Communication and Health and services for groups and people.
