Down with Youth Unemployment! — Latvia

„How is the situation of young people searching for a new job in your country?“ „How big is the average salary there?“ „Do you know how to make your CV better?“ „And can you create a leaflet in Canva?“ 

About 25 young people from Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania met in the Eastern time of 2022 to spoke about these and other questions in the youth exchange „Down with youth unemploynment“ in Liepaja, a city on the west Baltic sea coast of Latia. At first, we discussed the situation on the job market in our countries and compared the average salary there. For us, it was not such a big surprise that many people from the other countries would like to go for a job to our country 🙂

In different workshops we tried our best to be better applicant for a job: we boosted our CV, wrote a motivation letter to a real position in our country and thought about how to be better in job interview. We used our creative skills, too: in the time for „self organized work“ we created a leaflet and a video about this topic. To make the project more real, we had some study visits: we went to job center where we heard a speech about how to find a job abroad, in local project hub we spoke with young entrepreneurs about their unique ideas and in the local amber workshop we could try to polish a small dirty stone almost to a yellow diamond.

Above the given program, we had an opportunity to participate in leading of different workshops, energizers and in the kitchen. This made the feeling that we all create this project together.

In our free time we enjoyed the long Baltic sea beach with white sand and the long walks there, collected amber between shells, tried to put our feet into the cold sea water and breathed the fresh air. We visited an old Sowjet prison and damaged buildings from the second world war, walked through pine forests next to the beach and observed animals there. We enjoyed the Eastern time in local churches and on the Eastern market in the city center, tried some local food and learned about similarities and differences between Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Here I would like to say a big thank you to the sending organization EYCB and to hosting RASIO Perspektiva for the good job. We enjoyed the time in Latvia a lot! 🙂

                                                                                                                 Monika Traubová