  The purpose of this research is to study the connection of global properties
of eight young stellar clusters projected in the Vista Variables in the Via
Lactea (VVV) ESO Large Public Survey disk area and their young stellar object
population. The analysis in based on the combination of spectroscopic
parallax-based reddening and distance determinations with main sequence and
pre-main sequence ishochrone fitting to determine the basic parameters
(reddening, age, distance) of the sample clusters. The lower mass limit
estimations show that all clusters are low or intermediate mass (between 110
and 1800 Mo), the slope Gamma of the obtained present-day mass functions of the
clusters is close to the Kroupa initial mass function. On the other hand, the
young stellar objects in the surrounding cluster's fields are classified by low
resolution spectra, spectral energy distribution fit with theoretical
predictions, and variability, taking advantage of multi-epoch VVV observations.
All spectroscopically confirmed young stellar objects (except one) are found to
be massive (more than 8 Mo). Using VVV and GLIMPSE color-color cuts we have
selected a large number of new young stellar object candidates, which are
checked for variability and 57% are found to show at least low-amplitude
variations. In few cases it was possible to distinguish between YSO and AGB
classification on the basis of the light curves.
