Project description  

• Target group

• Co-ordinators

• Participants

• 4 phases

• The method of the project

• Time schedule

• Results

Target group

Women 35 years or older, unemployed or risking unemployment:

• having  inadequate professional skills

• graduate immigrant women

Since unemployment is the largest common problem in the European Union it came natural to focus on unemployed women to examine how unemployment affects and how different forms of support can help to come back to employment. In what way will the quality of life be affected? What more could be done to help to create a new career  and, if a new career isn’t possible, what could be done to raise the quality of life and assist in finding a function of their own in society and strengthen the feeling of social commitment.

Further more the participants prepared and trained themselves for the reintegration into the labour market by empowering themselves using goal focusing, alternative planning and collecting new knowledge and experience. The self-esteem, self-confidence and communication skills increased. 

We used modern information- and communication technology and focused on

Languages so the participants could communicate with the transnational partners by e-mail, fax and letter and also by videoconferences.

In this way we could contribute to equality between sexes and make information and IT-knowledge available to women with little chances to get it elsewhere. 

The understanding of the words equality, employment, self support, women’s rights in labour market and future prospects differ between Jönköping and our partners in Chemnitz and Vienna. In these areas we had much to learn from each other to achieve increased equality for middle-aged women.  

Co-ordinators

We started to recruit and train 10 women from the target group to co-ordinators. They worked two and two co-ordinating a group of 6 - 8 women.  

Participants

33 women between 35 - 61 years of age took part in the project. Some had only primary school, others were graduated. They had been unemployed between a few month up to 11 years. 

4 phases

The project Empowerment for women consists of 4 phases:

I.  Phase of reflection

II.   Phase of planning

III.  Phase of  change

IV. Phase of job creation  

The method of the project

Using the Empowerment model, see next pages, every participant prepared herself for her reintegration into the labour market. Every one did her own career plan and prepared herself for the future. Each group had two mentors, a female and a male.

Individual - Empowerment group - Empowerment project - Society      

Time schedule

The project was in operation for 18 month. The preparations started in early October -97 with recruiting and selecting the Co-ordinators. The Co-ordinators were trained in February - April -98, when the rest of the participants joined the project. It ended in February -99. Every month we have a reunion.

Results

In November -99, eight months after the end of the project, 70% of the participants were working, studying or starting up their own firms. The participants see each other often, they are networking.

• Employed  43,3  %

• Studying  13,3  %      

• Entrepreneur  13,3  %      

• Taking care of sign others  3,3  %

• Pension 3,3  %

• Unemployed 20,0  %