YES Youth Europe Self-Empowerment Cooperative

Information

Participants
28 young people (18 – 30 Years) – 1 from each EU country and 8 from other continents as guests

Date 26th April to 3rd May 2015

Place Schloss Tempelhof – Germany

Final Application Day 15th February 2015

The YES initiative aims to reduce youth unemployment primarily in Europe to be followed up in the rest of the world. With rates of 50/60% in Spain, followed closely by other countries like Greece, Portugal, Italy, UK and so on...dramatic action must be taken to eliminate this situation. YES will empower youth to reestablish it’s place in society and it’s dignity in today’s world.

The basic idea for YES SCE is very simple...as are most good ideas....

28 young people will be chosen from 28 EU States and will meet to discuss an initiative leading to the foundation for the YES COOPERATIVA. The 28 young people participating in the very first gathering for YES will be the founding members of an SCE or cooperative society. They will form the first governing board to implement the statutes and rules for the YES COOP together with the experts. They will also be the representatives and responsible for implementing YES in their home country. An expert who has experience creating many SCE's will be on hand throughout the event to guide the members.

Avoiding a Lost Generation 
In 2013, 74.5 million young people in the 15-to-24 age group were unemployed worldwide, which comes down to a 13.1 per cent youth unemployment rate – twice the global overall unemployment rate. The job crisis has hit young people in Europe especially hard. In Spain and Greece, youth unemployment rates are reaching a sky high 50%. Between 2007 and 2012, employment in Greece, Ireland and Portugal declined as a whole by 1.6 million jobs, but 75 per cent of these, i.e. 1.2 million lost jobs, affected younger people (aged 15-34 years).

Youth unemployment rates in specific countries as of September 2014: Spain 53.7%, Greece 50.7%, Italy 42.9%, Croatia 41.8%, Portugal 35.2%, Cyprus 34.9%. Moreover, 13 countries registered between 20.6 and 28.5%, and 11 countries between 7.6 and 19.8% youth unemployment (source: www.statista.com)

The Challenge of Youth Unemployment
In 2011, a youth's risk of being unemployed was 3x higher than that of an adult. Close to 75 million youth worldwide were unemployed in 2012. A total of 357.7 million youth were not in education, employment, or training (NEET) in 2010, and the number is increasing.

Peter Schwartz, president of the Global Business Network, wrote a book in 1991 titled The Art of the Long View. In that book he predicted that, by the year 2000, the earth‘s population would include more then two billion people between the ages of 10 and 21, about one third of the total population. That prediction has proven to be correct. Schwartz devoted an entire chapter to the phenomenon of "the global teenager," a force that he says will dwarf other demographic factors over the next fifty years. The pressure of their numbers, energies and idealism, he wrote, "will be so immense that it will reshape the world."
 

Learn more and get involved by downloading the pdf documents below. Deadline for applicaitons is February 15, 2015