Outreach to young people not in employment, education or training - A practical manual for outreach

Western Balkan economies have committed to the Youth Guarantee (YG), a commitment to ensure that all young people under the age of 30 receive a good quality offer of employment, continued education, apprenticeship or traineeship within a period of four months of becoming unemployed or leaving education.
Outreach to young people not in education, employment or training (NEETs) is a crucial phase for the success of the YG. However, outreach remains one of the most significant challenges for countries aiming to reintegrate inactive and disengaged individuals into society, learning and/or work through the YG scheme. Public employment services often delegate outreach activities to civil society organisations, municipal youth services, or social workers. Monitoring progress and ensuring quality of outreach work poses several problems to countries.
The EU agency European Training Foundation (ETF) and the Finnish Institute for Educational Research based at the University of Jyväskylä have therefore partnered with universities from all six Western Balkan economies to support the development of a monitoring and quality assurance tool for public employment services and other actors engaged in outreach to NEETs.
This manual is the result of joint work initiated in 2024 through which a Career Management Skills (CMS) framework for young NEETs was developed. This framework defines the knowledge, skills, attitudes and social networking skills needed in order to be ready to participate in the YG scheme. The CMS framework built the basis for the development of outreach support tools.
The manual was developed through a highly participatory process involving desk research and focus groups.