28/11/2012
Most of the people, especially if they are suffering a physical, learning, mental or social disadvantage, face problems and difficulties when trying to move from the training sphere to the labor sphere. That’s meant, not always the way from training and qualification world to employment is easy and quick. Different strategies and methodologies have been designed and implemented by European organization dealing with these issues. To review, collect, and summarize best practices is the main aim of the project.
AIMS OF THE PROJECT
The projects aims to share and to exchange the practices designed and implemented for organizations from the partnerships for improving the pass from the training to employment.
As a result of the exchange best practices on intermediation will be identified and collected in Best Practices Report Intermediation practices.
PARTNERSHIPS & METHODOLOGY
The Germans BFW – Nurnberg, SOS- Nurnberg, the Austrian PRO MENTE and the Spanish FEPAMIC conform the partnerships of the project.
During the project partners will learn from the different experiences and will have the possibility to know in detail how the different procedures or intermediation practices work. All meetings include the participation of labor tutors, trainers, experts and students.
A non public site on Google docs will be used as a reservoir for project results and project documentation. This site will be used regularly and will be the main tool for dissemination.
TARGET GROUPS
The project is addressed to experts on labor intermediation, trainers, stakeholders …, in general to any organization, which is responsible for the definition and implementation of intermediation plans for its clients.
The project will provide such target group with new ideas, new methodologies and strategies in order to guarantee the success of the intermediation plan.
TRANSNATIONAL MEETINGS
- Córdoba - November 2011 / Kick off meeting
- Nurnberg - February 2012 / II transnational meeting
- Linz - November 2012 / III transnational meeting
- Nurnberg - February 2013 / IV transnational meetings
- Córdoba - June 2013 / Final meeting
If you want to get updated about project results, new informations or you want to cooperate please contact:
FEPAMIC
Mr. Francisco Henares
Tel.: 0034957767700, Fax: 0034957767964
Email: fhenares.proyectos@fepamicic.org
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use whit may be made of the information contained therein.
01/08/11
“A successful story of development, integration and business”
The social economy, composed by non profit enterprises with social objectives plays an essential role in the European economy. These enterprises are present in most of the sectors of activity, and provide around nine million jobs in the EU.
The social economy is an important source of entrepreneurship and jobs in areas where mainstream companies consider that their investments are not sufficiently remunerative. The social economy is an important source of job creation, as it is less dependent on the up and downs of the business cycle and often provides labour intensive and social useful services.
The social economy has a long history of working for and with the disadvantaged in society. Its strong links with local communities and its democratic governance structures help to consolidate and develop social capital. Many of its organisations have a well established historical role in supporting the active inclusion of disadvantaged people. The social economy has demonstrated that it can greatly improve the social status of disadvantaged people and enable them to exercise gainful activity or create employment in areas where mainstream companies and employers do not invest.
In particular, the social enterprises build bridges towards employment for people who would otherwise remain excluded from the labour market and cater for a wide variety of disadvantaged groups, and while some act as temporary ‘springboards’ into permanent employment elsewhere, others themselves offer permanent sheltered jobs for more seriously excluded people.
Obviously, the social economy must be seen not only as a vehicle of job creation. It also fulfil the needs for social services and assistance over and above those met by the market economy or by public authorities. Social economy produce goods or services responding to specific local needs. Not only the social economy and the third sector are significant economic actors, they also play a key role in involving their members and European citizens fully in society. They also tend to involve stakeholders, including workers, volunteers and users, in their management.
The social economy has demonstrated its substantial capacity for social innovation. For example, social services have a very positive impact on reconciling professional and private life, gender equality, the quality of family life, and care for children, older people and people with disabilities. Projects with a positive environmental impact are another important aspect of the social economy’s innovative nature.
Social economy enterprises have a unique way of doing business since they combine
economic performance, mutuality between members and often also the achievement of social or societal objectives as a business purpose.
The social economy has also a key role to play in attaining the objectives of the new Europe 2020 strategy elaborated by the Commission for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. In fact, the social economy can usefully contribute to the three priorities at the heart of Europe 2020, in terms of
- developing an economy based on knowledge and innovation;
- a more resource efficient, greener and more competitive economy and
- fostering a high-employment economy delivering economic, social and territorial cohesion.
Despite the increasing importance of the social economy, there is still a great potential to be exploited to
- create high-quality jobs,
- create green jobs
- attract and retain in the labour market people currently excluded from it,
- strengthen social, economic and regional cohesion,
- generate social capital,
- promote active citizenship, solidarity and an economy with democratic values
- support sustainable development and social, environmental and technological innovation.
For 2007-2013 the ESF Regulation stresses the role of the social economy for promoting pathways to integration and re-entry into employment and job creation for disadvantaged and disabled people. In this context, member states and regions have included integrated strategies for the social economy in their ESF operational programmes and in some cases they have also identified social economy as an issue where they would like to share their experience and practice under transnational cooperation chapters of their ESF programmes.
In Austria we have more then 25 years of experience in developing and running social economy offers. Our former social ministry Dr. Alfred Dallinger offered in the frame of his curatorship under the headline “experimental labour market policy” a very supporting surrounding to develop these workshops. Four main points are responsible for this development 25 years ago:
- It was a strong political target to to reduce unemployment and to offer special jobs for vulnerable groups. The aim in the beginning of the 80´s was full employment and a unemployment rate lower then 3%.
- He trusted in NGO´s. He recognized that this kind of work can not be done by the government and his public authorities. So he looked for partners to do this experiments and he found NGO´s and they developed a still running structure of respect and trust.
- He found very creative persons and he gave them the necessary tools to use their creativity for new ideas and development, and they looked to the rest of Europe for successful examples for this kind of projects.
- He offered financial possibilities to do this kind of work with a very good sustainability structure.
As part of the introduction of this experimental labor market policy, the socio-economic enterprises in Austria were thought as an institutional measure against unemployment especially for the integration of long-term unemployed people.
Social economy offers are named in Austria as the second labour market offer because they get money from the public administration for their work and to enable them to survive on the market. After nearly 30 years we have to think about this splitting because
- also a lot of big enterprises and industries get a lot of money when they start to develop their business on a new place or in a new country. That means the jobs are supported with public money and
- the money the social economy services get is not for the visible products they are producing. The money is for the work of counselling and integration of vulnerable groups. It´s the price for the social benefit. So it is not a subvention, it is more the normal price for this special service for the community.
The labour contracts are time limited, so the strategy is a activating and integrating strategy. The duration of this time limited labour contracts is getting shorter and shorter. At the beginning of social economy offers we were able to offer 36 month of labour contracts and actual we have a approximately duration of 7 month. These changes are a mistake and Austrian social workers and social pedagogues are deploring, that it´s not possible to grow a holistic social pedagogic process in such a short time. It is more focused now on a quick integration strategy in the labour market with a smaller aim on sustainability of this integration. That´s why Austrian social workers sometimes meet the same clients two, three or more times in a period of some years. They call them revolving door clients.
Social economic services in Austria are small and medium sized enterprises. Key staff members with some basic social pedagogic skills and transit staff members are working together in different businesses. Professional social workers or social pedagogues are supporting them in the team. The training for the service users (transit staff members) is mainly orientated on different work related basic skills like punctuality, responsibility, work performance, self marketing training and so on. Sometimes they are also trained in professional skills but not to reach the full occupational standard. The general aim is to increase their employability. The service providers try to develop and to offer absolute realistic work conditions for the different branches. So in a restaurant they meet real guests, in a park they cut real grass and in a garage they are repairing real cars, and all the customers have to pay a common price for the service.
The percentage of own financial sources of the total budget depends on the different kind of services but in general the percentage is about 45% – 65%. At the beginning of this development we tried to sell the social idea and the benefit for the community. In the last 15 years we changed our marketing strategy completely because often customers think products from social economy are not good quality products, and underlining the social aim of our work to much is also stigmatising our service users. So we changed this strategy and now we are selling perfect quality with a common price on an open market in an equal competition with private companies. We are doing this work is in close coalition between social pedagogic and economic targets with equal rights.
The transit staff members have a common labour contract on the basis of the different collective contracts. So they have a common salary. For a lot of our service users this is the first time since a long time they get a salary. That´s why the impact of this salary, also on their self esteem and their feeling in general, most of the time is really good and important and this impact is also the beginning of a long lasting change process.
At the beginning of social economy services in Austria the offers were very concentrated on a few branches. After nearly 30 years you can find following possibilities:
Workshops for furniture, gardening, landscape gardening, blacksmith, locksmith, bicycle, restaurant, hotel, laundry, ironing, selling products - mini markets, recycling, repairing, hairdressing, garage for cars, auto body, delivering service, post service, renovation service, graphic & design, print shop, copy shop, book binding, ceramics, wheel chair production, office supply, sewing, cafeteria, home care service, cleaning service, research centre, agriculture, farming, and further more.
In 2009 there was a social economy offers had a feeling of Renaissance in Austria. Because of the economic crises the Austrian labour market administration in the public authorities invested 25% more money in social economy services to offer a social net to vulnerable groups which lost their jobs. So you can see in Austria social economy is still a tool of an active labour market strategy, and the positive impact of this service is beyond controversy. There are hundreds of studies showing the positive effects on:
- the self esteem of the service users
- their employability
- their social competence
- the economy in general
- and the community
There is a German study which shows, that it is ten times more expensive to bring long term unemployed people back to the labour market after four years unemployment, then to finance a workplace in a social economy project for them.
In the next years we have to be very careful not to destroy the social economy instrument in Austria with the arguments of the economy market. We have to change maybe the balance between social and economic targets from 50 – 50 to 40 – 60 in favour of social targets. Since two or three years we are discussing a lot about new work - new culture ideas following the ideas from Prof. Frithjof Bergmann. Maybe we should orientate more our activities to questions like “to find out what I really really want to do” then the needs of the labour and economic market. I am sure we will have some changes here in Austrian projects respecting this ideological basement from Prof. Frithjof Bergmann. The experience shows, we have the highest sustainability of our work, when our service users are identifying the solutions and the results as their solutions and results. And this is only possible when they really really know what they really really want to do with their future life.
The biggest problem for social economy is the acceptance in our mind. A lot of people cannot accept that these people getting a common salary. Maybe the same then they get at work. A lot of people think our service users are lazy and not able to do useful things. But most of the times these people are also not accepting these vulnerable groups as a part of our society. We have to know that sometimes people need 100% of their motivation and their potential to bring 50% of a common level off achievement. To exist in our societies and to have a full participation you need a basic income securing your daily needs. Offering only financial aid for vulnerable groups keep them alive but with this strategy you are combating independency and full integration as a full accepted and participating member of our communities. Social economy is one possibility to give this income to vulnerable groups and to have an economic added value on the other hand.
The way social economy projects are going in Austria in the last years is not good. The authorities reduce the duration because of saving money and bringing more people in a shorter time to this service. But when we use social economy projects as a kind of instrument for the coalition of social and vocational rehabilitation and integration, this can be also a successful story in Romania.
Tom Zuljevic-Salamon
Die Querdenker
Austria
