Upon the initiative of the Task Force on Youth Employment and Well-being, with a support of Liepaja (Latvia), Naestved (Denmark), Riga (Latvia), Rostock (Germany), Turku (Finland) and Århus (Denmark), the UBC Executive Board decided to establish a temporary Commission on Education. This decision was confirmed by the UBC General Assembly. The new commission is named Learning Cities Commission.
 
The new Commission will carry out the work plan of the Task Force on Youth Employment and Well-being. It will strengthen the UBC cooperation in the field of education, and also deepen the cooperation with the European Union Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region (EUSBSR) Policy Area Education (PA EDU). New projects, workshops and conferences are planned.

History of the Task Force

The UBC General Conference decided to establish a Task Force on youth employment and well-being in Mariehamn on October 2013. It was set to work until the next UBC General Conference 2015, in which it presented its final report. Task Force met six times during the years 2014 and 2015 with 27 experts representing 15 member cities and six countries contributing to the work.
 
The report suggested certain measures that are listed below:

• 2-4 thematic workshops per year focusing on questions relating to the youth guarantee and support of youth employment and well-being.
• The UBC should encourage all member cities to arrange, promote and seek funding for study visits and expert visits to help disseminate and implement the best youth guarantee practices of UBC cities.
• New projects and other forms of joint development between UBC cities.
• Follow-up survey on the implementation of the Youth Employment and Well-Being Programme in 2017.
• Decision about the coordination and funding of these measures.
• Focus on finding and trying out opportunities and working towards the desired goals.

 
In 2015 General Conference UBC decided to continue the work of the work the Task to help the implementation of the suggested measures.
 
During the last three years Task Force has strengthened a cooperation with the EUBSR (European Union Baltic Sea Region) Flagship School to Work (S2W). The Flagship aims to strengthen transnational cooperation between stakeholders in the Baltic Sea Region in the field of education and works in order to prevent early school leaving and develop new support methods for vulnerable groups of students/youth, which means that their goals are parallel to the ones of the Task Force.
 
Task Force offers the following possibilities and services to the UBC member cities:

• Joint projects
• Seminars, Conferences
• Study Visits, Workshops and Trainings
• Collection of Good Practices
• S2W knowledge Platform (www.s2wflagship.eu)
• Networks

Commission meetings: