EM-Kit. Empowerment Kit for Immigrant Women with Low Educational / Working Experience
CALL: DG EAC/41/09
LENGTH: 36 months
STARTING DATE: January 2011
RESOLUTION NUMBER: 509974-LLP-1-2010-1-SE-GRUNDTVIG-GMP
socialempowerment.eu
1. PARTNERS
Promoter Entity: Folkuniversitetet Kursverksamheten vid Uppsala Universitetet, Sweden
Partner Entities:
DOCUMENTA, Spain
DIMITRA ITD, Greece
MMC – Mediterranean Management Centre, Cyprus
AKSES, Czech Republic
Folkuniversitetet Kursverksamheten Lunds Universitet, Sweden
2. SUMMARY
EU has lately experienced large inflow of immigrants from non- European countries where women account for 45% of migrants with an employment rate 16.9 % lower than of women of EU nationality. Among this group there is a large number of women with low educational/working experience, dependent of social welfare (EuroStat, 98/2008). During several years this partnership has been working with this group through different activities to break their social isolation, called “ICE-BREAKING” activities. According to the statistics from partners only 5% of 12250 participating in “ICE-BRAKING” activities managed to enter the labour market. According to the partners´ experiences, the main barrier for entrance to labour market is a lack of vocational/professional education. The reasons that the target group does not seize the opportunity to use the pre-vocational training in order to gain the core competences are low self-esteem, complexity of information and lack of prior references.
3. AIMS
3.1. General Objective
The overall objective of the project is to improve accessibility to pre / vocational / professional education for immigrant women, especially those with low educational / working experience, in order to help them to enter the labour market and become more active members of society.
3.2. Specific Objectives
The specific objective of the project is to tailor an empowerment kit in key competences based on the needs of the target group. The preparatory kit will comprise a set of modules needed for entrance to formal pre/ vocational / professional education by immigrant women with low/ educational working experience. The training will be combined with continuous individual support provided by the bilingual mentors with intercultural background. Mentor´s role is to steer and coach the individual learning process and conscious choice of profession. Mentors will also assist elaboration of individual action plan based on a number of steps for entering pre/ vocational / professional education according to individual needs / possibilities of participants. The proposed educational model will follow “ice-breaking” social activities arranged by the partners in this project dealing with integration and gender quality issues.
The proposed preparatory kit will be an important step for immigrant women´s access to employment and active citizenship through conscious choice of profession, development of individual action plan and acquirement of competences necessary for successful attendance of vocational programmes in the host country.
4. TARGET AUDIENCE
The target group consists of non- European immigrant women who are outside the labour market and are financially supported by social welfare system of the host country.
All the partners in the partnership have a long experience in working with the above target group. It means that they have well developed network among the target group and NGOs working with ice-breaking activities since several years back.
Each partner aims to cooperate with one or two NGOs running ice-breaking courses. Further each partner aims to involve well-trusted individuals among the target group who are active in the community and who have managed to enter the labour market.
