Steps towards Empowering Unemployed Women

The initiative presented here was proposed by Göteborgs Municipality in Sweden, in response to the call from the Erasmus + Key Action 2 programme for “Cooperation and Innovation for Good Practices” in April 2014. We are currently entering the project’s last phase and it seems to be a good time to share some of our learning more widely. In this first blog, we present an overview of the project.

The women involved in the concept of the project are 6 adult educators from organisations in Belgium, France, Iceland, Italy, Spain and Sweden whose common prior experience was involvement in a one-year Training of Trainers course at European level some years ago.

The main goals of the 3-year Strategic Partnership we developed are:

a) to explore how collaborative approaches can be implemented, in each of the countries involved, to improve the access of unemployed women into economic activity of some kind;

b) to develop “good practice” pilot actions – in line with available local resources and partnership possibilities in each region - from which we can learn and “transfer” elements to our own realities.

We are especially interested in the role adult education plays but are aware that it cannot – in isolation - respond holistically and sustainably to the longer-term empowerment process of unemployed women and their integration into the labour market. Therefore, there has been an important emphasis on developing cross-sector collaboration with other partners in the employment field e.g. social welfare and unemployment agencies, coaching and vocational training bodies, municipal and local community services, the labour market etc.

We do believe, however, that adult education has an important role in clarifying the steps that can be taken to facilitate pathways and find innovative forms of support and orientation for unemployed women– as well as to explore the content and potential of educational initiatives which would contribute to empowering them.

Steps to Empowerment:

* Time for Exploration & Discovery:

In year 1, each country investigated and mapped an overview of the policies and services supporting women’s economic empowerment in their area. They identified obstacles – both cultural and institutional – facing existing initiatives but also identified elements of good practice to be presented in the “Mapping Results” of the website http://sheempowersproject.wixsite.com/she-empowers at the end of this phase.

* Time for Action:

Each country partner has a triple role during this period in:

a) coordinating the creation and development of a local network - composed of representatives from organisations in the different sectors operating in the field of women’s employability, empowerment, enterprise and education. This network will work together for two years in order to create better cross-sector cooperation conditions and a more coherent strategy to support female economic empowerment in their identified area.

b) coordinating the implementation of some of the elements of good practice identified and exchanged during a Learning Activity. Country coordinators will assist cross-sector partners to find common objectives to introduce innovative elements - or reinforce existing strong elements - in services currently offered to unemployed women; e.g. this may be creating the conditions for new cross-sector partnerships, broadening access to existing services to new target groups, reinforcing one specific element of work, finding resources for complementary areas of work etc.

c) identifying the learning & training needs of the professionals working with the target group in different ways (recruitment, coaching, workshop-facilitation etc.); this will be done throughout and is essential for the start-up of the Training Module Development phase.

* Training Module Development:

According to the training needs identified, 2 experimental 5-day “Learning Activity” modules are currently being developed to support professionals working in the field of women’s access to economic activity. These modules will be implemented in Belgium and Italy between March and May 2017.

* MULTIPLYING EVENTS will take place in each partner country in June 2017.