*Interview taken for Orangelog.eu within the coverage of the AER Youth Regional Network meeting, 10-12. XII. 2009, Paris. Photo by Yannick Brusselmans.*

He’s only twenty-two years old and he is already actively involved in the policy decision process on the European level. Bulgarian Rosen Dimov, also known as the youngest consultant in the bureau of European policy advisors with the European Commission, is among the hundred young people that have come to Paris to attend the AER conference on youth employment. He’s also the leader of the Association of Student Organizations in South Eastern Europe, a country coordinator of UNICEF Rural Voices of youth for Bulgaria and network coordinator of the Pays of Lisbon. At the moment he’s doing an academic fellowship in International and EU law in the Netherlands.

Orange: You’ve been actively participating in youth NGOs since you were fourteen years old. What does this give you?

Dimov: It all started with my feeling that I am not doing enough for society. I decided that I should not wait for changes to happen, but seek and create chances to make these changes. At the beginning I joined existing organizations and later on I set up new organizations and started working on my own projects. In general, all of these initiatives gave me an immeasurable amount of knowledge and skills. You make new friends and you create a large network of professional contacts. Most importantly, you see the result of your work, you leave an imprint to the surrounding environment and that’s what matters the most, what gives one self-fulfillment.

Orange: What are the biggest challenges youth face in the transition from school to work and in the context of the current economic crisis?

Dimov: Either in the case of premature or in the case of delayed adulthood, there are insufficient measures at the European national and grassroots level to support the transition of young people and help them acquire all the skills they need to adapt to life, work and family responsibilities. We could use the financial crisis as an opportunity to readjust the existing programs, funding, instruments, policies and make them correspond better to the dynamically changing reality.

Orange: And if you should point out the skills that are particularly important when it comes to youth employment, what would these be?

Dimov: In the first place, a precise self estimation – who am I, what do I want and what do I need in order to get it? After that, a young person should be willing to find the relevant source of information he or she needs, should be eager to participate in different training programs to grab the best job on the market. To do so you need to be proactive as well.

Orange: And what is your idea for a youth partnership on a regional level?

Dimov: Parties of the social dialogue at the regional level, such as government, business leaders, NGOs, trade unions and youth associations, should maintain consistent contact with each other and come up with new solutions to any significant change in the labour market. It is their shared responsibility to make a region more attractive not only for young people from this region but also for other social groups, even going beyond the borders of the regions.  And here regional twinning is a must.

Orange: How do you personally imagine your ideal job?
Dimov: I would like to remain dedicated to the development of my region and link young people with the best they can get from all around their region, no matter how old I am. Even though we may speak of expanding Europe, subsidiarity will be a core principle that young people and regions will be benefiting from.

*An article written for Orangelog.eu within the coverage of the AER Youth Regional Network meeting, 10-12. XII. 2009, Paris *

One of the main reasons we spend years and years studying is the belief that, at the end, the knowledge and skills we acquire at school and university will lead us to a good job afterwards and to fulfilment of our future career goals.

However, nowadays education is one of the most controversial topics on the political and social agenda, as the gap between what is needed and what is offered on the labour market is getting wider every day. Moreover, at the moment twenty per cent of the youth in the EU are unemployed, although most of them do have a good educational background. As a matter of fact today young people are better educated than at any other time in history but unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be enough.

The question which remains is if this percentage, almost twice higher than the total unemployment rate, is a consequence of the current financial and economic crisis or if it is a sign that our education system needs some quick and large reforms in order to reflect the changes that have taken place during the last couple of decades, such as globalization, technological revolutions, organizational changes, even climate change.

Era of unpredictability

What is difficult is finding the right balance and getting to know where to draw the line – what to keep, what to take off, what to add. The main challenge is that we are now living in an era of unpredictability, a time of constant changes, and to forecast what knowledge and skills one will need in the near future is impossible. If you look at the numbers, there’s a prediction that until 2020 there would be 100 million new jobs created and a significant part of them don’t even exist today. So how to prepare for the unknown?

Here comes the role of using both formal and non formal education initiatives and teaching skills that most probably everyone will need at a given point of his or her life – organization skills, team work, analytical thinking, willingness to take responsibility, creativity, problem solving, learning how to learn skills, etc. The education system should change in a way that does not provide only knowledge but also practical skills which helps one to adapt easy to the constant changes that occurs in the environment and to be as flexible as possible in terms of acquiring new knowledge, information and skills needed. That’s what the education system should give students at the first place and which will make the transition from school to university and then to work much easier.

Fundament of success

How could that be achieved? A good point to start is building better links between educational institutions and “real life” (e.g. including internships into the curricula), promoting initiatives like “Europass” so to increase the recognition of non formal education, having soft-skills seminars, etc.

As a conclusion I would like to cite Thomas L. Friedman, author of the international bestseller “The World Is Flat”, who says in his book that “In the future, how we educate our children may prove to be more important than how much we educate them.” Finding the right balance, the right techniques and the right people to educate the youth will ensure we will all enjoy the benefits afterwards. There’s a saying that education is the fundament of Europe’s success and we should make sure that won’t change.