Powering a New Future: 11 December 2008, Lisbon

Lenia Samuel, Deputy Director General of DG Employment, Social Affairs and EQUAL Opportunities gives her first impressions on the conference. She congratulates the organisers with a very successful event and emphasises the need to start with the mainstreaming of all the good practices that are on display at the conference into the European Social Fund.

‘The EU arrived for the first time in 2002 to this region with this EQUAL project’. With this opening, Guillermo explains the impact on the Deloa project in rural Galicia. The project focused on providing training and employment opportunities in new jobs for unemployed women and ensuring the sustainability of the actions. The services that have been created in this rural area include childcare and care for the elderly and also a flexible minibus system which is a real asset, as the remote villages are not well served by public transport. He explains how EQUAL, has positively contributed to promoting the local economic development of region improving transport and communications.

This project supported ‘separated’ children, children under 18 years of age who are outside their country of origin and separated from both parents or previous/legal customary primary care giver. These children suffer physically, socially and psychologically as a result of being without the care and protection of their parents or previous primary care giver(s). The project set up integrated local networks between public authorities and third sector organisations to integrate social educational training and labour market policies. The networks were essential to provide comprehensive approach and a common vision to address this increasing phenomenon.

This project focused on gender equality in the labour market as well as the implementation of the gender mainstreaming in public and private organisations. She highlights the importance of the presence of gender equality in politics, programmes and products and general services. Their main has been the training of over 500 people. Her main message is that the implementation of gender mainstreaming can only be achieved if there is a clear political will and resources are provided.

The main focus of Common Ground - Breaking New Ground was ‘harnessing local potential’ to develop the Kirklees workforce. To do this, the project worked to support local employers in embracing a diverse workforce and also in engaging individuals from ‘underrepresented’ and ‘disadvantaged’ target groups, with an overall aim to broker the two together.

EURoma is a European Network made up of representatives of twelve countries determined to promote the use of Structural Funds to enhance the effectiveness of policies targeting Roma and to promote their social inclusion. She explains their activities, which are mainly sharing experiences and practices and creating common tools and products.

She explains how ‘innovation does not come by chance’. Project managers have a key role to play in the promotion of regulations, mechanisms and necessary competences for the development of that innovation. All these conditions have to be present for social innovation to take place.

He explains that human trafficking is a reality in the EU. He describes a human rights-based and victim-centred approach is needed to increase the reintegration prospects for victims of human trafficking and to make it easier for them to step out of illegality.

He describes how during the period 2000-2006 of EQUAL Spain has been very active in EQUAL funding over 400 development partnerships that supported a large volume of individuals. He explains the importance of EQUAL in promoting partnership working, fostering innovation, transnational cooperation and looking at new ways of inserting disadvantaged into the labour market. Good practice under EQUAL has been successfully transferred into the programming period (2007-2013). EQUAL has been key in creating networks amongst key stakeholders and developing new ways of working together to share experience and achieve a bigger impact with the actions.

This project saw the daily race against the clock not only as a problem for people juggling jobs, careers and families, but also as the legitimate concern of public authorities, enterprises, social partners and NGOs. This project strengthened the Time Bureau in the city of Rennes that was set up in 2002. The decision to create a physical infrastructure to develop strategies that would improve the work-life-balance of women and men was based on research. This research looked into the changes involved in moving from an industrial society with work closely tied into well-established living patterns of families and communities, to a service and information society where the rhythms are increasingly out of sync.

He describes how his project focused on issues related to social markets, social clauses and corporate social responsibility. He mentions the importance of influencing public authorities to promote the use of social clauses in their contracts or procurement processes to provide added social value and facilitate the integration of disadvantaged groups.

The project focused on looking into ways of structuring the childcare offer in order to improve social recognition, professional status and quality of jobs in the childcare sector. The project also aimed at attracting more men into the caring profession.

The project objectives were to increase the provision of services for children and the elderly as well as the quality of these services to better fulfil the needs of the users.  He describes the daily care services developed under EQUAL and how partnership working at national and transnational level has contributed to their success.

SIED project aimed to support enterprises in communities who have experienced social exclusion in the labour market by further developing the REFLEX model so it could be applied London wide with potential as a national model.  The essence of Reflex model was to develop the capacity of community organisations to enable them to support and advise businesses generated by their communities. Reflex enabled organisations to employ Community Based Business Advisers and to develop their capacity to support enterprises and entrepreneurs.

The objective of the Community of Practice on partnership in the ESF is to stimulate more creative partnership thinking and implementation in the structural funds, especially in the ESF. This is to be achieved by convincing programme managers of the importance of partnership and enabling them to provide high quality support to partnerships in a structural fund context.

Etienne Wenger emphasises the importance of building a social infrastructure of communities and networks to connect the different projects such as those presented by EQUAL.  He explains how the innovation in EQUAL was to define, recognise, and identify how to construct a ‘social infrastructure’.

This Learning Network of Member States will focus on how to promote age management actions in different programmes, approaches and actions based on the exchange of experiences and practices.

Access Ability was a Dublin based project with a mission to maximise employment opportunities for people with disabilities by addressing the structural, attitudinal and policy issues which currently prevent employers from recognising the abilities of individuals.

The aim of the project was to make young people coming from disadvantaged backgrounds more independent by providing an integrated offer of quality support services consisting of 4 phases – idea development, concretisation, entrepreneurial commitment and common on an optimal business creation plan. The young entrepreneurs were provided with training, qualifications and individual support services in the development of a business plan and also during the implementation of their business idea. In the last years Verbund Enterprise assisted 1300 young people in the development of their business and created additional 1000 workplaces. Around 70% of these young people are still in business.

The project tested new solutions for the vocational, and also the social, integration of Roma. What is extremely important is that Roma representatives are directly involved and they are making sure that many other members of that community have the opportunity to gain additional skills and to strengthen their existing capacities. All this is aimed at ensuring that these isolated individuals and groups can participate in the labour market and in wider public life.

The MABIS programme which was a predecessor to the ZUBILIS DP operated a number of prisons in North Rhine-Westphalia providing an individualised support plan for the prisoners that involved guidance on suitable training opportunities and possible placement in employment after release.

The aim of the Equal Last Mile Development Partnership was to equip beneficiaries from the target groups with the skills, experience and confidence to move forward in their chosen career paths and become integrated into the region's creative and cultural networks. In many cases, individuals have been enabled to move 'the last mile' into employment or self-employment in fields in which their groups are currently underrepresented. Others have succeeded in progressing into further education and training.

She explains how the birth rate increase in Estonia has had a negative effect on the availability of places for children at the kinder gardens and the professional qualified childminders. The EQUAL project aimed at increasing employment opportunities for parents by creating flexible childcare options.

This project developed vocational training and self-empowerment support for adults and young people so they can be integrated into the labour market.  The one-year education consists of both theory and practical work and leads to a certificate, acknowledged by the labour market organisations. She explains the value of their empowering approach and the positive effect it had on the students.

The Paideia Galiza Foundation has a long-standing commitment to the social inclusion of vulnerable groups and to rural development, taking women as one of the principal ‘agents of change’.  Rosalia describes how the concept of ‘Europe’ has come alive through the implementation of programmes like EQUAL and how this concept can be taken as an opportunity for the future development of social responsibility and social justice.

The project aimed at making vocational training more flexible. He explained how the project was developed between job creators, qualification companies, local authorities and chambers by the testing of different modules.

The project’s main idea was to increase the employability of ex-offenders by providing vocational training and practical experience assisting local farmers. The contact with the local community also provided the opportunity to challenge attitudes and perceptions.  She describes how the project developed and that more than 1000 courses were given for more than 600 people.  A staggering 50% of ex-offenders that attended the courses found a job.

She highlights the importance of having a long term perspective when working on gender issues rather than having a ‘project’ mentality. ‘Gender perspective is something you have to work with all the time, it doesn’t have a beginning and an end’. It has to be addressed within the organisations, staff, education system and methods used in order to change the way of treating men and women and achieve full equality.  She welcomes the approach of European Social Fund in requesting all projects to have a gender perspective rather than having special projects for gender issues.