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Jobs: Whose Job Are They?

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It does not take a historian to realise that socio-economic change is accelerating at an ever-faster pace. Entire industries are disappearing as new sectors emerge, and new work models are taking the place of life-long careers of yesterday. Innovation sounds great, but for a whole generation of young Southern Europeans, the many changes that have taken place in their short lifetimes have left them without a workable model for their own economic future—much less the wherewithal to create jobs for others, too.

Jobs, whose job are they? It is easy to get lost in the maze of competing rationales, forecasts, and calls for action. Most look towards business in good times, and government in bad times (indeed, payroll taxes and mandatory contributions eat 33% of Italian salaries). By contrast, philanthropy and the citizen sector are typically seen as peripheral in the fight against unemployment and its social fallout, at best a stopgap for underfunded social services.

However, they can be more than that. They may be a powerful source of new solutions, as a new alliance between foundations and social entrepreneurs from across Europe has set out to show. It is led by Robert Bosch Stiftung, one of Germany’s leading foundations, and a network of local foundations such as the Hellenic Initiative (Greece), the Fondazione UniCredit (Italy) and Fundacion Botin (Spain). The Bosch Stiftung alone has pledged 1 million Euro. Two years after launch, the partners believe philanthropists, businesses and investors will contribute five times as much capital, as demonstrated in other countries.

The key: social entrepreneurs like Said Hammouche from France, founder of talent agency Mozaik RH. Mozaik RH brings overlooked youth from disadvantaged backgrounds to the attention of top employers, who then gain access to a much broader talent pool. Or like Sandra Schürmann from Germany, whose Projektfabrik has helped tens of thousands of unemployed youngsters in Germany discover hidden talents and find employment or start businesses.

Of course, citizen changemakers like Said and Sandra exist everywhere. But the question is: what can we learn from them that could benefit young people in Greece, Italy, and Spain? Recently, a number of collaborations around social entrepreneurship tackling unemployment and creating new spirit and skills across the world reveal patterns of success and failure (for examples, see these Forbes and Innovations articles resulting from work with MasterCard Foundation in Africa, or this "Discovery Framework“ for solutions from the MENA region).

One of the insights may sound disappointing at first: social enterprises typically do not themselves generate large-scale employment. However, they do trigger large-scale solutions to unemployment and many other challenges resulting from economic crises, by providing new models for social service delivery, inclusive labor markets, entrepreneurial culture, and social cohesion. Sandra’s work has been part of a cluster of innovations around empowering youth to tap into dormant skills, an effort that has been critical to all but eliminating long-term youth unemployment in Germany. Other groups of successful social entrepreneurs have made a difference nationally by encouraging micro-entrepreneurship, often among communities previously considered excluded from the labor markets. In many cases, an "I can do it!“ mentality proves contagious and triggers community action for failing health and social services, too.

Many of the pioneers behind these proven social innovations will meet at the GlobalizerX on Employment in London this September 19th and 20th to design strategies that will bring their work to where it is needed most in Southern Europe. Some may scale their organizations directly, other will franchise or open-source their approaches. This will be followed by series of events in Southern Europe that aim at mobilizing changemakers to be inspired by these innovations, take action, and find support for their own ideas.

These leaders aim to kickstart the emergence of a support system for citizens who believe that creating jobs is everybody’s job.

This is the first of a series of articles on this key challenge, and inspiring citizen action tackling it.