The last online workshop of the first semester of 2021 of Coca-Cola Hungary’s #YouthEmpowered programme ended a couple days ago. The programme, which aims to assist young people to find their ways on the labour market ended on a high note this year. Here’s a short summary of the first semester, including their new target groups, the number of participants involved so far, and also some news about the novelties they are planning for the second part of the year.
With more than 400 new participants, 31 webinars and a total of more than 60,000 minutes spent with studying, #YouthEmpowered programme closed the first half of 2021 on a high note. The programme, which has been running successfully since 2017, originally aims to support young people between the ages 18-30 who are neither working, nor studying, to find their way on the labour market, through a set of in-person and online workshops. Although the pandemic has limited the opportunities of the programme, their online events have been running smoothly and in the last six months they have managed to expand the existing target groups, currently also offering workshops for young people living with disabilities and high school girls as well.
While with the Jamba Foundation the programme cooperates to help young people living with disabilities, with The Association of Hungarian Women in Science the company supports high school girls interested in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields with their self-discovery and career choices. This semester, #YouthEmpowered, which is close to reaching 10,000 participants altogether, has been particularly busy for the programme’s mentors as well, 14 of which took part in one of the online workshops during the first half of the year, offering over 40 hours of their time to help the participants. The mentors, all senior associates of Coca-Cola HBC Hungary, proved to be the most active during the workshops organised through #YouthEmpowered’s ongoing partnership with Google Hungary's Grow with Google programme, where they participated and supported the group for the entire duration of the online workshop.
In addition to introducing two new partners and target groups, the programme has also launched a new podcast this year, which presents the programme's partners, trainers and the most pressing issues of the target groups through monthly episodes. The podcast's host, journalist Bence Horváth, focuses on the stories, personal experiences and the wider social phenomena behind them that the programme's trainers and experts face on a daily basis. The podcast is updated monthly with a new episode - you can listen to the latest episode here (in Hungarian) and subscribe to the channel here.
While the programme’s workshops are currently on hold for the duration of the summer holiday, there are lots of exciting projects going on behind the scenes, all planned for the second semester. Soon, the results of a research will be published which explores how the situation of NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training) youth in Hungary has changed during the pandemic. The social media channels of the programme will undergo a redesign, and the long-awaited ground-up revamp of the programme's digital learning platform is also expected to be completed by this fall.
