Social Innovations for the Upskilling of Vulnerable Youth, Especially Young People not in Employment, Education, or Training (NEETs) (closed)

A new Call under the ESF+ Social Innovation+ Initiative 

This is a Call for proposals for EU grants in the upskilling of vulnerable youth under the European Social Fund+ (ESF+) Social Innovation+ (SI+) Initiative. The objective of the Call is to develop the skills of vulnerable youth, and in particular NEETs, by re-engaging them in learning and aiming at their (re-)integration into the labour market.

By supporting transnational cooperation, the ESF+ SI+ Initiative aims to expand the best practices in various fields, including employment, education, skills, and social inclusion across Europe. The Call aims to foster the development or scaling up of innovative methods that have proven to be successful in other contexts, in other countries or regions or within previous experimentations.

With an estimated budget of 9 million EUR, the transnational projects should focus on:

further development of innovative approaches to effective outreach, learning models and skills activation in the labour market;
targeting vulnerable young people;
making a success by combining the essential elements as the core of the projects.

Main Aspects of the Call

Here, you can find detailed information about the objectives, activities and target group.

Timeline of the Call

Duration: The indicative duration of a project should be up to 24 months.

Grant amount: The indicative expected grant amount is between 200 000 EUR and 700 000 EUR per project (but this does not preclude the submission/selection of applications requesting other amounts), constituting not more than 80% of the project’s total budget. A co-financing of at least 20% must thus come from other resources than the EU budget.

The form of grant: a lump sum grant.

Who can apply? 

Only consortia are eligible.

To be considered eligible, a consortium must include an applicant (Coordinator) and at least one co-applicant from another EU Member State than the Coordinator.  Each consortium must also involve at least one public or private legal entity as a coordinator, beneficiary or as associated partner that is a potential co-founder of further implementation of the innovative approach to be scaled-up or replicated (ESF+ Managing Authority or Intermediate body, a foundation, etc.). The application must indicate the role of such institution as a potential co-founder.

Call documents:

1. Call Conditions (amended version)

2. Amendments of 29.01.2024, 22.02.2024 & 03.10.2024

3. Annex 1_Detailed Budget Table (amended version) and How to enable macros (instruction)

How to fill in the Detailed budget table

4. Annex 2_Grant Agreement, template (amended version)

5. Annex 3_Application Form, template   

How to fill in Application form – structure, design, forms, tips for applicants

6. Annex 4_List of Required Documents 

7.  Annex 5_List of the Previous Projects, template 

8. Annex 6_Final Report “Lessons learned and future plans”, template 

How to apply 