Study Visit to Lithuania Vilnius 2024

A delegation from Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions, SALAR, and representatives from School to Work, S2W, visited Lithuania on February 20th and 21th.

We were invited by Brigita Blavaščiūnienė from the Employment Service under the Ministry of Social Security and Labour of the Republic of Lithuania, to learn more about their work with youth in a NEETs situation and to discuss similarities and differences between our two countries and what we can learn from each other and what we can collaborate on.

The first day we visited Vilnius Client Service Department and here we got introduced to Lithuanias career centres, Karjeras, by the advisor of Service Organisation Department of Lithuania PES. The Director of Lithuanian PES, Inga Balnanosienè, talked about youth unemployment in Lithuania, challenges and solutions.

Lectures from different organisations

During the afternoon we were able to take part in lectures from a few different organisations:

• Youth Affaires Agency, Vilnius Municipality representatives presented how to work with Non-Formal education.
• Vilnius Archdiocese Caritas presented how they work in a project called Move Forward, a project about practical skills for young people between 14 and 29 years old.
• JRa – Agency of Youth affaires implements the established national youth policy measures which encourage young people’s motivation to engage in active public life and take part in addressing youth problems.

Visit to Alytus

On the second day we travelled to Alytus, a small town, about one and a half hour from Vilnius. Here we visited Alytus Client Service Office and met with Local Regional Career Centre staff and partners and we got to know more about vocational training and transition from education into the labour market for young people.

Taking part in other countries work with young people not in education, employment or training (NEETS) is very rewarding and we have a lot to learn from each other. The difficulties that young people face or the reason for the difficulties of young people, does not differ between the countries, so together we can exchange knowledge and experiences how to best support our youth. We all agreed that it had been a worthwhile study visit and that we need to continue to cooperate in these matters.