Community Group youth services manager Rob Pringle (back), with Noah Cassar-Borg, 16, and Chloe Rayment, 17. Picture: ANDY ZAKELI
Shellharbour and Wollongong councils are likely to team up to target youth unemployment.
The Give a Kid a Go website and program has been proposed to help teenagers who leave school early to connect with job opportunities through mentoring in workplaces.
A report to tonight's Shellharbour City Council meeting says both cities contain pockets of high generational youth unemployment.
"We need to connect employment opportunities and hands-on mentoring programs in our city because there's a lot of kids falling through the gaps in the system," Mayor Kellie Marsh said.
"What we have developed here is a program that looks at reducing not just the jobless rate but disadvantage and disengagement."
Shellharbour's councillors will decide tonight whether to build the website.
It would allow young people and employers to register their interest in the program.
A co-ordinator would also be hired to recruit disengaged youths, act as a case manager for website users and work with other youth services to meet the needs of each young participant.
Cr Marsh and Wollongong Lord Mayor Gordon Bradbery helped develop the concept.
Access Community Group youth services manager Rob Pringle said the program was needed.
"We can support young people through a whole range of things addressing the barriers that have caused them problems at school or are preventing them getting into employment.
"But if there's no employers at the end ... then it's all for nothing," he said.
"It's a case of services working together with the council, and with council influences ... and business connections, it definitely could be a positive thing."
Council staff said the program had merit and could cost about $55,000 a year.
They recommended building the website now and considering the rest of the program in 2013-14.