How to effectively combat youth unemployment?

Sénart is approximately 30 km from Paris and has about 100,000 inhabitants. The town was built in the nineteen-sixties to cope with the problems of the overpopulation of Paris. This new town has a high percentage of young people between 16 and 25 years of age without work. Sénart has found an unusual way of offering better prospects to these young unemployed.

In 1999, a project was started in Sénart to turn young unemployed into young businesspeople. Young people registered as job seekers are given the opportunity of starting up businesses of their own.

The idea for the business has to come from the young people themselves, the focus being on motivation and creativity. Young people can submit a plan to the ´Mission Locale´(a support unit for the unemployed) in Sénart and are then given the opportunity to explain their - often original - ideas in an interview. The "Mission Locale" assesses the feasibility and the motivation of the young person.

If the plan is approved, the young person receives 400 hours of schooling in entrepreneurial skills and everything associated with these. This schooling and a number of short practical internships are followed by another critical assessment of the idea. If it is still feasible and desirable, a plan of action is drawn up. The young people are supervised in setting up their own business.

Mission Locale Sénart
Didier Dugast (Director of the Mission Locale Sénart)

10/02/2004

case

Urban Policy > Social inclusion & integration > Integration of social groups

Young people