The capitalization strategy for EDIBO Bootcamps was discussed during the 2nd Info-Day in Bulgaria
On 26.08.2021, the second Info-Day of the EDIBO project took place at the Jaco hall of the Flamingo Grand hotel in the Albena resort, near Dobrich. Organized by the Institute for Youth Initiatives and Innovations (IYII), the purpose of the event was to share the results achieved and the good practices accumulated during the current implementation of EDIBO.
The project management team presented the main project approach, indicators to be achieved on consortium level at the end and also the project activities implemented already in Bulgaria. A total number of 154 NEETs from different places in the country were included in the sixth cycles of trainings for improving the digital skills & entrepreneurship of young and unemployed people. The training courses were held in the period 14.01.2020 – 14.05.2021 in the municipalities of Varna, Dobrich and Plovdiv, and two of them were online given the pandemic situation in the country. It was interesting the fact shared that 64% of NEETs who have been trained are women living in rural areas. In general, the young people participating in the courses have different social standards, digital skills and education (just over half have completed primary or secondary education and the rest have higher education), less than 25% have only a basic level of English.
After the training phase, some of the young people had the opportunity to participate in one-month internship program within the project and to gain valuable experience in a real work environment in an IT company.
The second session of the Info Day was dedicated to discussion with stakeholders attended the event. The representatives of local business companies, associations, training organizations and experts in the field of HR analyzed the possibility of continuing IT training courses, ensuring sustainability and capitalization of project results. In this respect, the EDIBO team presented the SWOT analysis of the training courses and the national market analysis, prepared during the project implementation and also the summary of feedback received from project main stakeholders. After discussing, the participants agreed on the following potential opportunities for capitalizing the EDIBO bootcamps:
• Trainings to take place in small rural areas, where public events are not usually held and unemployed young people are bored and have no other opportunities for learning and expression. Thus, the trainings will provide an opportunity for social contacts with other young people with similar social status in the region, which is very important for communication between young people and building interpersonal relationships, especially important in the workplace.
• In this type of non-formal training such as “Bootcamp”, new training modules can be included in the training program, and the internship program can be applied not only in IT companies, but also in graphic design and web design agencies, engineering company, etc.
