The virtual institute for youth aims to address high youth unemployment in Croatia through online simulations, lectures, consulting, and business incubation. It would provide young people experience through virtual simulations of real work processes. Specialized online lectures and conferences would expand education. Consulting would help harmonize education and jobs. A virtual incubator would support young entrepreneurs through online services, idea sharing, and project funding. Financing would come from local government, EU funds, and successful startups. The goal is to empower youth and boost the economy through an innovative virtual platform.

1. Virtual Institute for Youth
Team name: Youth United
Country: Croatia

2. Experience and discovery
• Croatia Youth Unemployment Rate for December 2012 was 46.10 %.1 – over 130
000 jobless Croatians are young people aged 15-24
• Youth Unemployment Rate in EU: 22.4 % (June 2012)
• Predictions says that 70 % of today’s jobs will be lost in the future because of new
technologies
Youth unemployment rates, EU-27 and EA-17, seasonally adjusted, January 2000 - December 20122
1 http://ycharts.com/indicators/croatia_youth_unemployment_rate_lfs
2 http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Unemployment_statistics

3. Youth Unemployment in Croatia
• Reasons:
• 1) Lack of experience and internship programs – for every job, employers require work experience
(1 year of work experience in average) and highly educated young people coming from universities
do not have that required experience; also only a few companies offer internship programs and the
internship program idea is undeveloped
• 2) Imbalance in demand and supply on labour market– there is strong imbalance on labour market
caused by education system that is not adjusted to needs of economy; For example, Croatian
education system produces too many economists and lawyers (demand is smaller than supply) who
later can’t find job whiles labour market needs more doctors, biologists, etc.
• 3) Corruption and nepotism – although there are many things done in preventing and solving these
problems, corruption in public sector and nepotism are still bothering young people in Croatia who
are searching for a job
• 4) Education system – based on theoretical knowledge, slow in adopting new technologies
• 5) Lack of entrepreneurial climate – due to many factors: bad economic climate, lack of
investments, politics, low entrepreneurial programs for youth
• 6) Centralization and low mobility – Capital city Zagreb is center of education and business; it is
hard to expect that young person from Zagreb will accept job in some other city in Croatia; many
educational institutions are located in Zagreb; many various lectures, training and conferences are
held only in Zagreb
• 7) Overall economic environment – in last ten years this reason is becoming a big problem; every
day many companies go bankrupt and many jobs are lost while starting new business is becoming
very hard and risky

4. • Advantages of young people in Croatia:
 They are on average better educated than their parents,
technology oriented, ready to make changes and
full of new ideas for new businesses
• Disadvantages of young people in Croatia:
 Lack of experience in real sectors, they don’t know
how to start and lead business and they don’t have money to start it,
due to many problems they can’t devote to the career
• Problems connected with youth:
• 1) Brain drain – the best, highly educated experts are leaving the country and going to the Western Europe countries
and Canada looking for better jobs. This is a big problem for the economy because primary, secondary and higher
education in Croatia is free (in public schools and universities), financed by taxpayers. A lot of money is invested into
education of young people, but return of that investment is falling because of brain drain to foreign countries
• 2) Lack of funds for financing ideas and entrepreneurial activities
• 3) Young people are not encouraged to make changes and deliver new ideas
• 4) Population ageing – due to emigration of young people and birth rate decline caused by poor economic situation
• 5) Youth deviance – deviant behavior of small groups;
young people dissatisfied with current economic environment,
unmotivated for education

5. Solution – Virtual Institute for Youth
• Virtual Institute for Youth with four main functions:
• 1) Simulations – real time simulations for gaining experience
• 2) Specialized virtual lectures and conferences – for better
education and specialization of youth
• 3) Government and University consulting – for harmonization
of labour market, improving of education system and
connecting youth and their ideas with government
• 4) Virtual Incubator for Youth – for young entrepreneurs

6. Simulations
 With technology many real process can be simulated.
• Main objective of simulations is to enable young people
to gain some experience in specific field and to develop
advanced system of internship grants program
• Virtual games and competitions can help young people to develop some real knowledge
and in cooperation with companies from real sector potential prices like internships.
• Organization of special virtual cases and challenges for internships (cooperation with
companies – company submits request to institute and select terms (number of
awards, duration of challenge, challenge type, etc.) and institute in short term organizes and
start case/challenge/competition, etc.
• Students will be able to select difficulty, subject and duration (1 week – 7 days/week, 1
month – 5 days/week, 6 months – 3 days/week, etc.);
• Examples:
 Virtual accounting – real time accounting of virtual company, workload: 1-2 hours/day (5-10 hours/week)
 Virtual investment on stock market – to every student mentor is assigned and students invest virtual
money on virtual stock market
• Every simulation can be specially designed for gaining experience in specific field
 Optional some ECTS credits can be awarded for participating in specific simulation program

7. Specialized virtual lectures and
conferences
• Main purpose: to expand knowledge of students/to gain some new knowledge in specific
field of interest
 Solution of problems with centralization and location - all conferences and lectures are
online available to everyone
Government and University consulting
• Cooperation with government, universities and companies
• Analysis of labour market, government and universities consulting
 Joining young experts and their ideas with companies and government
 Assisting in solving problems with imbalance in demand and supply and helping
government to have better understanding for needs of youth

8. Virtual Incubator for Youth
• Two factors are important for youth employment:
 1) Greater investment in education and research
 2) Encouraging entrepreneurship and support ideas
• For now, only best projects in Croatia gets offices in incubators due to lack of space – What if we lost some ideas that
could employ hundreds of people because on the firsthand they seemed unsuccessful and we did not give them a
chance?
• Young people have ideas but the biggest problems are:
 1) Lack of initial capital
 2) They can’t find other team members with specific knowledge for the project
 3) Problems with regulations and requirements for starting a business
 4) Misunderstanding of local government
 5) Lack of knowledge in company management and leadership
• Virtual Incubator
 Cheaper than „traditional” incubators
 Can provide many important services online for young entrepreneurs free of charge– legal advices, accounting
services, patenting, consulting, management advices, financing, expert help, company formation services, marketing
services, hosting services, web page design services, etc.
 Network for finding partners – every idea posted on specialized platform is copyrighted; young people can post their
ideas and search for other young experts to join them;
• Example of process:
 1) John has great idea about new revolutionary mobile application
 2) Submit an idea/project into special online form
 3) Evaluation of idea/project by specialized team
 4) Project design/redesign, searching if idea/project exist  if yes – next step, if no – Can we improve it?
 5) Project is posted on specialized platform if John needs associates (example: programmers, designers, economists, etc.)
 7) Negotiations with other potential team members – are they good enough for this project? Will they be paid freelancers by
incubator and owner of idea or they will share ownership?
 6) Agreement about financing plan, funds needed, repayment of loan plan, ownership, services needed, etc.
 7) Work on project!

10. Financing, SWOT analysis and Impact
• Financing
 Institute will be non-profit oriented
 Institute employees: young people, volunteers, students, experienced experts
 40% Local Government + 40% EU funding and grants + 20% income from
successful startups, interest revenue, donations from companies
• SWOT analysis
Strengths Weaknesses
 Sustainable – low operating costs due to innovative use of  Financing high risk projects
technology and volunteering -> „Youth working for Youth”  Over reliance on technology
 High-efficiency –services available from everywhere, risk-
free simulations and practices
 Free or very cheap services
 Collaboration
Opportunities Threats
 Youth employment  Security – hacking
 Progress of project and spreading to all EU countries – attacks, data stealing, etc.
European Virtual Institute for Youth  Financing problems
 New inventions  Possible big ratio of
 Benefits for the community unsuccessful startups
• Impact and reach
 Potential reach - 100.000 young people through simulation programs, virtual lectures and conferences or by using virtual
incubator services
 More than 50 young unemployed people will be directly employed in institute
 More than 200 young and old volunteers
 More than 60.000 young unemployed people will benefit (find job, internship, get valuable experience for getting job, get
additional knowledge for jobs or start own company)