Slaviana Paranicheva and Karyna Kalinichenko, students at the ERI “Ukrainian Engineering and Pedagogical Academy” of V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, took part in a workshop entitled “How to help young people choose a career and take their first steps in it”, which took place in Kyiv. The event was organised by UNICEF Ukraine in collaboration with the customer experience agency Lanka.CX.
The aim of the workshop was to explore the current challenges faced by young people when choosing a career path, as well as to identify effective solutions to support young people in the early stages of their professional development. Participants worked using the modern Human-Centred Design (HCD) approach, which focuses on the needs, interests and experiences of young people.
As part of the workshop programme, participants were introduced to the fundamentals of a people-centred approach and the principles of effective engagement with an audience. Teams worked on generating ideas to address current challenges in the field of career guidance, as well as on creating prototypes — physical or virtual solutions — that could be presented to and tested amongst the target audience.
An important part of the programme involved directly testing ideas amongst people of different age groups. The students had the opportunity to talk to participants, receive feedback on their own work and analyse the audience’s needs. This approach not only allowed them to test the effectiveness of the solutions they had created, but also to gain a better understanding of the problems faced by today’s young people when choosing a future career.
As part of the workshop, participants, together with representatives from the business and education sectors and local stakeholders:
- explored the challenges young people face when choosing a career path;
- generated new ideas and solutions;
- tested the prototypes they had created;
- sought ways to facilitate effective interaction between young people and the labour market.
At the end of the event, each team presented their solutions and key findings to the other participants. Taking part in the workshop proved to be a valuable experience for the students in terms of teamwork, developing communication skills, creative thinking and the practical application of modern solution-design methods.
The students of the Institute of Information and Communication Technologies (UIPA) express their sincere gratitude to the Centre for Innovative Educational Technologies for the opportunity to take part in the workshop, the process of professional development for young people, the exchange of experience and the generation of new ideas aimed at supporting the future generation of specialists in Ukraine.
