Mind the Gap! - Regional conference and workshop

Workshop

On October 30, 2019, the regional conference and workshop of the Mind the Gap! project took place in Budapest. The closing event of the project examining the inclusion of Roma unemployed youth in the Youth Guarantee Program (YG) in several countries was organized by the Budapest Institute.

The regional conference was organized by the Budapest Institute. In addition to the representatives of the BI and its Hungarian project partner Romaversitas, the Bulgarian consortium leader the Center for the Study of Democracy (CSD) and the World Without Borders (WWB), the Romanian Roma Entrepreneurship Development Initiative (REDI) and the Romanian Center for European Policies (CRPE) also attended the event.

The project examines the inclusion of unemployed Roma youth in the Youth Guarantee Program from the perspective of the local YG systems. The present conference and workshop was primarily aimed at the interactive sharing of experiences, research results and good practices of project partners and local stakeholders, as well as at drawing up the lessons learned.

The meeting provided an opportunity to present common and locality-specific challenges for the integration of Bulgarian, Romanian and Hungarian Roma young people into the labour market. The interactive workshop not only allowed participants to better understand how different YG systems work, but also to develop national policy recommendations to help local NGOs, policy makers, and representatives of their respective Public Employment Services to implement YG programs more effectively.

The closing “Mind the Gap!” project produced national reports, policy analyses and recommendations, as well as a YG Guide and a number of information material.

You can read more about the project here.