Opportunity Finder - Citizen Participation Tool
A solution by Yaghma submitted to Employment for young people
OpportunityFinder brings qualified workers from City of Àgueda into the traditional manufacturing local industry By Citizen Participation Tool (CPTool) to co-design, jointly pilot, implement and roll out innovative models. By giving special attention to young people and gender parity, OpportunityFinder brings CPTool and other public engagement initiatives into models with a “glocal” focus, for more inclusive, context relevant and culturally adapted community-based participatory research and innovation. OpportunityFinder aims to foster the recruitment of qualified workers into the traditional manufacturing local industry by developing a collaborative web-platform focusing on employment of young people and women in a co-design/co-creation setting. The inputs from systematic impact evaluation studies will be continuously integrated in order to make CPTool more accurate and responsive to young and qualified workers needs and concerns. Building on a comprehensive communication plan, with a strong effort dedicated to the development and implementation of a sustainability strategy, OpportunityFinder outcomes will: a) build effective cooperation and debate between traditional manufacturing local industry and municipality of Àgueda by encouraging the systematic and ethical involvement of young and qualified staff and their societal concerns in local industry and research and innovation processes, b) allows young people to explore the diversity of jobs and career paths in their local environment c) give evidence and support industry leaders and decision-makers to foster the recruitment of qualified workers into the traditional manufacturing local and regional industry d) interactive twinning and matchmaking between the students and local companies to find joint solutions to the emplyement challenge in city of Àgueda e) connecting with people who are passionate about their job, they can find all the inspiration and advice they need to carry out their school and professional life projects.
One Page Summary
OpportunityFinder offers a Citizen Participation Tool that finds opportunities in a specific industry, namely manufacturing local industry in the city of Agueda. It is an open source digital platform allowing any secondary and higher-level education students including women (Target Community), local companies and local school and to freely use and modify it.
With OpportunityFinder, both young people and local companies have a secure and reliable environment where they can participate. OpportunityFinder is therefore can constantly grow and improve, evolve to become an even better platform for citizen participation in the region of Agueda. Target Community and local companies by sharing their needs and opportunities freely on Citizen Participation Tool (CPTool), can build a relationship of trust and understanding.
What is OpportunityFinder?
• Free Open source Citizen Participation Tool (CPTool)
• Easy to use and adaptable to the needs of each institution
• Enables the participatory innovation of young people in local industry
• Helping to find a new job in the region of Agueda:
Target Community proposals
Set the Market Size: get a clear view of the manufacturing local industry in Agueda
Find Viable Opportunities: Personalized and prioritized opportunities
Benefits: with OpportunityFinder you can:
• Set up existing participatory processes used by the municipality of Agueda
• Allow target community to participate into challenges raised by local companies
• Adapt the participation processes to the needs of target community, local companies, local school, and the municipality of Agueda.
• Learn from the experience of all the other institutions that use OpportunityFinder.
Advantages: why OpportunityFinder is the best option:
• Open access & free
• Rich functionality: participation at different levels.
• Secure: Its features protects privacy.
• Adaptive design: with web browsers and mobile devices.
• Efficient
• On-going support
What can you do with OpportunityFinder?
OpportunityFinder can easily be adapted to the needs and preferences of target community and local manufacturing companies:
1) Local companies job descriptions:
• Target community can present a proposal to solve local company technological problem or/and improve their research and innovation initiatives.
• An advanced notification system, so that the target community can easily be updated.
• You can find opportunities in a specific industry in the region of Agueda.
2) Co-creating practices for the recruitment of young people and women in the region of Agueda:
• Co-create a set of innovative citizen participation models adapted for the recruitment of young people and women, with a focus on innovative and participatory techniques
• Focusing on blind spots of manufacturing industry in the region to include target community's needs and concerns.
• Co-creating and jointly pilot, implement and evaluate new models and methodologies for CPTool through the establishment of local partnerships.
3) Training materials for young people and women to support them in their career:
• Training videos addressing different manufacturing industrial topics.
• Consolidating existing training initiatives organized by the municipality of Agueda.
• Training via the Collaborative CPTool web-platform.
4) Consolidating existing regional career activities organized by the municipality of Agueda through the mentoring and twinning program via CPTool:
• Assessing existing regional career activities in the region of Agueda.
• Comprehensive reviews of existing good practices in other regions.
• Spreading out the concept of participatory research and innovation via CPTool to local schools.
5) Twinning services including matchmaking functionality between local companies and target community:
• Fast and efficient identification of potential qualified workers and relevant companies in the region of Agueda.
• Interactive twinning and matchmaking between the students and local companies to find joint solutions to the emplyement challenge in city of Àgueda.
Social impacts of using OpportunityFinder:
Using OpportunityFinder allows target community to understand their role in the manufacturing industry in Agueda region. It also helps to bring in different types of information to the participation process so that target community could explore and develop their interests and perspectives. Among youth, visualization in OpportunityFinder is experienced as particularly helpful for facilitating youth participation.
By providing target community and local companies with the opportunity to frame and convey information to each other and the municipality of Agueda as well as communicate with other citizens, the use of OpportunityFinder may serve an important function to continue the implementation of career strategies in the region of Agueda based on local or national financial support programmes.
