European Social Fund - Innovative projects for employment
The European Social Fund will finance up to 52 innovative projects aimed at promoting employment in the European Community. The projects have been selected following a call for proposals launched by the European Commission in October 1996 around the theme "New Job Sources" (OJ No C 210 of 29.10.1996). As part of its strategy to tackle the problem of unemployment, the Commission promotes and finances pilot projects under Article 6 of the European Social Fund (ESF) Regulation. The aim is to test out innovatory ideas and approaches on specific aspects of policy which can be taken on board in the mainstream Structural Fund programmes once they have proved their worth. The aim of the "New Job Sources" call was to support projects focusing on the creation of new jobs in the framework of new needs (new trades resulting from technological developments, environmental protection, demographic changes) and on new skills which encourage and improve worker mobility. Of the two hundred projects received in response to the call, fifty-two were pre-selected and at present forty-nine have already started their activities. The rate of funding of these actions varies from 12% to 100%, the average funding rate being 62%. A third of the projects selected by the Commission emanate from public authorities at different levels, another third from non profit organizations including NGOs, and the remaining third from the commercial sector, both the private sector and the social economy. However, they all involve partnerships of different types of organizations and sometimes also trans-national partnerships. Projects concentrate on different types of activities: - Designing new forms of training or training in new skills/professions; - Organizing work differently; - Creating jobs in new areas and developing employment services capable of responding to changing structures of offer and demand. In many cases, projects cover different types of activities as necessary parts of an integrated approach for generating employment opportunities. Art. 6 projects give new content and a dimension of reality to ESF policy aims. For example, a Danish project called "The Village Grocer" helps immigrants exposed to long term unemployment and social exclusion to develop managerial skills leading to the opening of groceries in rural areas - thereby offering the local population a facility that had disappeared due to market rationalization. In another example, "Mobility for Food Wholesale Workers", cross-border cooperation is used to help workers to adapt to changes in the production system. Through new forms of skill development based on confidence building and self-appraisal, workers in mid-term career will gradually shift from purely manual tasks to integrating IT in their daily work.