BYMBE: Supporting the empowerment of young NEET mothers

What tools can motivate young NEET mothers to re-enter education and training? How can they be involved and given adequate support in times of discouragement or crisis?

To answer this question, the partners of the BYMBE – Bringing Young Mothers Back to Education project met for the fourth meeting in Dublin on 9 and 10 January 2019 to continue the work of piloting and developing tools for counsellors, social workers and educators working with young mothers.

In the first phase of the project, the partners collected information on the education and childcare support system in the partner countries: Austria, Bulgaria, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania and Spain. The national reports have been collected in the Report on National Education and Support Services for Young Mothers. CESIE has published the National Report in its Digital Library.

After the Train-the-Trainers event held in Spain, project partners organised local training activities for social workers, teachers, trainers, psychologists and educational and professional guidance counsellors to broaden their knowledge about tools for working with young mothers.

At the same time, training activities for young mothers started in the 6 partner countries to support their educational and vocational guidanceand empowerment, and we have launched the BYMBE campaign for people and authorities to pay more attention to the needs of young mothers who intend to re-enter education but do not have adequate support.

For all organizations and people interested in understanding how to build a motivational and awareness campaign, the project offers a Handbook for Outreach Awareness & Motivation Strategies, which explains step by step which are the key elements to develop an effective communication strategy and how our campaign has been built.

In the next months, partners will complete training activities with young mothers to finalize the BYMBE Manuals:

• The Set of Intervention Methods to Involve Young NEET Mothers;
• BYMBE Orientation Pack;
• BYMBE Empowerment Pack;
• BYMBE Support Pack.