EUROPE – Youth unemployment is a big problem across Europe. In some states, up to 44% of young people don’t have a job, with around 22% youth unemployment across Europe as a whole.

European e-Skills week is a major event to seek how to equip young people with the right IT and Communications skills to make them attractive to employers.

It’s organised by DIGITALEUROPE and European Schoolnet, in conjunction with hundreds of partners, including major IT industry companies such as Cisco, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Nokia, Microsoft, Sony and many more.

And there’s a competition, Project Passion, which is where young, European readers of this blog stand a chance to score big. There are thousands of Euros to be won and a bunch of other prizes, including Nokia Lumia smartphones.

What you have to do is create a communications campaign on the theme of “e-Skills: there’s a job waiting for you”. Underneath that umbrella theme, there are three sub-categories and your campaign should address one of these:

• e-Skills and me
• e-Skills: jobs of the future
• Creative e-Skills

The campaign can be created for any medium, from mobile to music to tablets to posters and social media.

You’ll need to document what you’ve made on a blog or YouTube or even Twitter and tell the organisers about it.

Note that while we’re partnering with the event at Nokia, it’s not our competition; we don’t decide the winners or adjudicate on who’s qualified to enter. We just thought that readers ought to know about it.

Read more about the competition, the full rules and how to enter on the competition website.

UPDATE:

The deadline for entries is June 30, 2012 – so it’s time to get busy!