Cherkasy, October 10 - training program for youth “Skills Lab: A Successful Career” has closed. Within one month, young Cherkasy residents developed the necessary knowledge and skills for successful employment and presented 5 social projects for the city and the region development. The program was implemented on the initiative of CSR Ukraine, an expert organization of the CSR Development Center, in cooperation with the UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, the Ministry of Youth and Sports of Ukraine and the Cherkasy Youth Center.

This year's "Skills Lab: A Successful Career" Program was held for the first time in Cherkasy in order to make young people's professional skills better suited to the needs of employers and increase the level of competence of citizens. According to the Cherkasy Oblast Employment Center, 87.4% of the unemployed people under 35 had professional experience and even used to hold management positions. Despite this, young people are still registered with the employment service and need the appropriate knowledge and skills to succeed.

According to Nadiya Kirichenko, coordinator of the Skills Lab Program of the Center for CSR Development, the lack of those knowledge and skills currently in demand in the labor market among young people is one of the probable causes of under-employment among Cherkasy residents: “Our main goal is to do everything for young people to find a decent job and build a dream career in their region. We have designed the program to focus on the skills of the future, have engaged the best lecturers, held creative challenges and exercises after each lesson to develop these skills. We plan to scale-up this project and to extend it to other cities in Ukraine".                          

"We hope that the Skills Lab: A Successful Career Program has inspired its participants to seek their own path of career development and strengthened their self-reliance", Yuliya Novak, UNFPA Youth Advisor, said.

The program was attended by 32 girls and boys from Cherkasy oblast, including two participants with disabilities who reached the final session. In the course of their training, they completed 6 interactive sessions to develop ten skills of the future. In particular, young people have learned effective planning, critical thinking, time management, negotiation, creativity and project management. Moreover, participants attended a video-integrated lecture course from representatives of leading companies, including Metinvest, Ukrtelecom, Watsons, lifecell, Ukrenergo, Apercon, UKRSIBBANK, Raiffeisen Bank Aval, and received notebooks for homework.

Throughout the training, participants also worked on their own social projects to test their capacities as drivers of positive changes in the community and to understand the importance of making social change in any area. As a result, 5 social projects were presented at the final session of the program in the following areas: education (a series of educational videos for schoolchildren, ranging from counteracting bad habits to time management and family planning), culture (a video on corruption in society), ecology (eco-marathon and Eco.Chill Photo Series, youth engagement (Good Deeds Challenge from caring citizens of Smila) and assistance to the elderly (the Do Good action, which involves paying for the things bought by the impoverished elderly people).

Vadym Maksymenko, a program participant, notes that the training program helped to significantly enhance his professional skills: “It is teamwork that was the most interesting for me during the lessons, as well as distributing roles and preparing a social project on educational topics. We chose 4 topics and created videos for them: addiction (alcohol, drugs), family planning (child birth planning), time management, doing business and startups. We handed all the videos over to educators and child psychologists for further refining. We plan to distribute them in Cherkasy educational institutions".

Finally, participants had a chance to listen to the project speakers' motivational speeches and started interviews with the preferred employers in the Speed ​​Dating format. Representatives of business, public and civic sectors received CVs of program participants and agreed on future collaboration. In addition, young people will also be able to join companies and organizations as interns.