MedCities organised a study visit to learn about local initiatives promoting entrepreneurship and the employability of youth and women in Barcelona. From the 2^nd until the 6^th of October two delegations of policy-makers and technicians from the municipalities of Tangier and Tetuan had the opportunity to learn about the public services supporting unemployed youth, public-private partnerships collaborations for employability and entrepreneurship programmes, among other topics.

Particularly relevant was the visit to Barcelona’s Job’s Fair. The Director of the fair offered participants a very interesting site visit and explained to them the key elements to be taken into account to organise such a huge event. Getting all stakeholders involved was highlighted as the key to success. Both cities, Tangier and Tetuan, will organise for the first time a job fair in 2024 in the framework of the project.

Inter-institutional cooperation among different administrations on the promotion of employability, professional training and orientation services was also a key topic of the visit. In this sense, meetings were organised with 3 different levels of administration: the local, the metropolitan and the regional level. At the local level participants learnt about the resources, services and programmes for entrepreneurship, professional training and orientation services of Barcelona Activa, the city’s public agency of Barcelona for local development; They also visited Grameimpuls, a public enterprise owned by the municipality of Santa Coloma de Gramenet, created 34 years ago that currently has several professional training centres around the city offering courses to more than 4.000 students per year and working with more than 1.200 enterprises.

At the metropolitan level, participants met with representatives of the Barcelona Metropolitan Area and the BCN Vocational and Education and Training Foundation to learn about the support programmes for the economic development of the area and the key role of the Foundation in forecasting skills and training needs in the labour market.

Finally, at the regional level, participants visited the Catalan Employment Service (SOC) to learn about their programmes for professional qualification, mixing training and work, and their cooperation with other public administrations.

The TT-EMPLOI project seeks to provide training and employment opportunities for youth and women and reinforce the role of municipalities in the promotion of local employment, professional training, guidance, and entrepreneurship.

The project is currently finalising a territorial diagnosis of the labour and employment market in the two cities. Based on the diagnosis results, the project will then develop tailor-made training programs for young people in economic sectors likely to offer more employment opportunities. Moreover, a support incubation program for entrepreneurship projects run by women will be also launched on such potential economic sectors previously identified.