INNOVATIVE STRATEGIES FOR EQUAL EMPLOYMENT
The project brings together partners - mainly local authorities - with a shared vision of employment and equality. They experience COMPLEX STRUCTURAL SHIFTS in local labour markets. Due to economic crisis and financial distress, they lack opportunities to create more effective and inclusive employment strategies. In a meantime, many social groups in these local spaces - MIGRANTS in general, and ROMA in particular - face substantial difficulties to integrate into the labour market. They become relocated on the margins of the local economy, being often stigmatized and socially excluded. Until relatively recently, the local authorities involved in the project have not been able to effectively address this issue. To bridge this gap, our project will create an exchange of policies and strategies to improve the partners’ labour markets. As the FRONTLINE AGAINST LABOUR EXCLUSION, local authorities have a vital role to play in achieving more equal local employment agendas.
The project’s global aim is to fully address the INTERREG IVC programme priority “Employment, human capital and education”. The project will create an INTERREGIONAL TRANSFER OF KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICE to stimulate more inclusive and sustainable employment policies. It also enables the partners to tackle discrimination and unemployment by analysing and discussing existing policies, strategies and scenarios. The partners will focus on INNOVATIVE WAYS OF ENHANCING LOCAL LABOUR MARKETS and define strategies to improve the situation of the disadvantaged. The project’s objective is to understand the relation between local labour dynamics and patterns of migration, but also to facilitate the CROSS-FERTILISATION of ideas and practice. The innovativeness of the project lies in its topic and methodology, but also in addressing issues on the creation of inclusive work environments and the stimulation of employment.
The project consists of 8 SEMINARS and 11 REGIONAL CONSULTATION MEETINGS and develops different TOOLS to stimulate and improve local employment while making it more equal. The seminars correspond to the needs on the ground and are to be organized in various locations, involving different STAKEHOLDERS from diverse institutional backgrounds. The partners develop INNOVATIVE POLICIES towards discriminated groups (migrant and Roma populations, and in a broader context youngsters and long term unemployed) and address the main problems faced by these groups in relation to employment, training and inclusion. By doing so, they will test innovative tools developed by the ILO (International Labour Organization) on promotion of fair employment opportunities. Indeed, Europe needs INCREASED EMPLOYABILITY and INVESTMENT IN HUMAN CAPITAL. Our project strives to put these issues on the interregional agenda, making them more visible, better understood and easier operationalized in local contexts.