YENESIS 2.0

Active project

2018–2024

Project contact

Islands suffer from high unemployment throughout the year, with a seasonal peak on non-tourist periods, especially amongst young people. Young professionals in islands face several challenges such as limited job opportunities that often requires years of experience that leads to a vicious cycle of a lack of a job – lack of experience situation.

YENESIS project intends to educate, network, and prepare young people in order to meet, work and create green jobs.

The first phase of YENESIS project started in 2018 with providing young people with entrepreneurial innovation training, study tour projects in foreign countries and a half-year internship in a company in their home country.

In 2022 the consortium was granted with additional funds for YENESIS 2.0. The second phase will continue helping young people in islands on their journey towards sustainable employment. The focus topics are climate adaptation, sustainable food systems, sustainable water systems and circular economy.

YENESIS 2.0 will offer 175 young people aged 19-30 living across Europe a five-day innovative training opportunity in all five focus topics.

SEI Tallinn is responsible on developing the training materials on the sustainable food systems topic and for organising the training course for Estonian youth.

Project partners

Cyprus Energy Agency (CEA), Cyprus – Lead partner

Møre and Romsdal County Authority, Norway – Expertise partner

Network of Sustainable Greek Islands (DAFNI Network), Greece

SEI Tallinn, Estonia

Regional Agency for Energy and Environment of the Autonomous Region of Madeira (AREAM), Portugal

The International Centre for Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems (SDEWES), Croatia

Sapienza University of Rome – Department of Astronautical, Electrical and Energy Engineering (DIAEE), Italy

Canary Islands Institute of Technology (ITC), Spain

Frederick University, Cyprus

Chrysalis LEAP Limited, Cyprus

Financing

YENESIS is a project funded by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway through the EEA and Norway Grants Fund for Youth Employment.

Project channels

YENESIS on Facebook

Kaidi Tamm

Head of Unit, Senior Expert (Sustainable Cities and Resilient Communities Unit)

SEI Tallinn

Brigita Tool

Junior Expert (Sustainable Cities and Resilient Communities Unit)

SEI Tallinn

Johanna Lehtmets

Communications Manager

Communications

SEI Tallinn

Anette Parksepp

Communications Expert

Communications

SEI Tallinn

The main objective of the YENESIS 1.0 was to reduce youth unemployment by creating green jobs on islands. The four thematic areas that were addressed were energy efficiency, renewables, sustainable tourism, and mobility. The project worked with participants of the target groups in an elaborate process to equip and prepare the young people for employment in green jobs.

In order to guarantee the sustainability of future employment, the project focused on energy and environmentally sustainable occupations which not only are deemed to be necessary and highly sought for in the coming years, but will also ensure sustainability in the grand scheme of things.

The YENESIS 1.0 project also included an educational programme on business innovation and the following thematic areas: mobility scheme, mentoring scheme, a final stage where participants worked on projects offered by local, regional and national authorities for 6 months.

In YENESIS 1.0 an online platform was developed which contains good practices for youth employment shown through numerous success stories. Many good methods to battle youth unemployment have already been tested and employed, especially in the expertise partner’s country. The YENESIS partners collected these success stories and input them on an online platform, open for stakeholders and other entities. The goal of the platform is to promote innovative practices for employment to the interested parties in order to adopt similar actions towards lowering youth unemployment. See the platform here.