CYCLES – Child and Youth Caretakers Financial Literacy and Entrepreneurship Skills

Child and youth care systems in countries across Europe provide decent support for children and adolescents with complex needs. However, in most countries care ends at the age of 18, leaving the so called young care leavers to stand on their own feet and earn a living. Young care leavers (YCL) belong to the most vulnerable groups in European societies, exhibiting an above-average propensity to fall into unemployment, poverty, criminality and other undesirable developments.

YCL employability would increase substantially with improved financial literacy and entrepreneurship skills. The problem is, however, that YCL hardly get the chance to develop such skills during care. After all, even a majority of their caretakers have deficits in this field, as there are rarely any economic subjects in their studies or formation.

Therefore, CYCLES addresses child and youth care practitioners as multipliers: CYCLES empowers CYCP to act as financial literacy and entrepreneurship mentors, pass on their skills and help establish favourable conditions for further capacity building.

Main Target Groups of the CYCLES project:

• Managers from child and youth care organisations
• Child and youth care practitioners
• Young people in care and prospectively young care leaver
• Researchers from academic partners (FH, Uni, IKJ)
• Scientific community
• Political and educational authorities
• Decision makers
• Companies who especially employ young care leavers

Main Outputs of the CYCLES Project:

1. The CYCLES training, which will be developed by the project consortium with the input from different perspective. The training is going to consist of 6 modules which will be developed and implemented by the project consortium. It is essential that the consortium works together in the development and implementation phase and each partner adds the knowledge according to their expertise.

2. The CYCLES Transferability and Evaluation Handbook, which ensures that the CYCLES training materials created will be thoughtfully implemented to other countries or to other parts of the participating countries. For the consortium it is of utmost importance to create a sustainable impact on CYCPs and young care leavers to increase entrepreneurial skills and financial education.

Partner Institutions:

• FH JOANNEUM GESELLSCHAFT mbH (AT) – coordinator
• Fundacja Samodzielni Robinsonowie (PL)
• BUNDESVERBAND THERAPEUTISCHE GEMEINSCHAFTEN OSTERREICH VEREIN (AT)
• Groupe SOS Jeunesse (FR)
• SPSPD FICE-Bulgaria (BG)
• IKJ Institut für Kinder- und Jugendhilfe gGmbH (DE)