European Social Fund Conference

Employment Solutions: What Works and Why.

National Exhibition Centre- Birmingham 19^thand  20^th June 2000

On the 19 and 20 June 2000 the Multi-lingual Careers Resource Centre was selected to take part in Employment Solutions: What Works and Why. A Conference and Exhibition about employment and innovation. The Resource Centre ran a workshop on the 20^th June regarding Innovation and Advice and Guidance. The conference and subsequent workshops  gave an opportunity for projects to report their results and highlight the innovative ways of enabling disadvantaged groups to enter the labour market.

Lambeth Lessons in Empowerment

The Multi-lingual Careers Resource Centre has formed a partnership with four other ESF projects operating in the London Borough of Lambeth to work on an initiative called "Lambeth Lessons in Empowerment". The project will last for three months starting in July and finishing at the end of September 2000.

The project is designed to widen the impact of each individual project and will enhance both the target groups selected as well as increasing our user groups. Each project has worked with different representatives of disadvantaged and vulnerable groups including: refugees and migrants, alcohol and drug abusers, lone parents/ women returners, the long term unemployed and ex-offenders.

The Lambeth Lessons in Empowerment project will add value to the work achieved by these four individual projects by highlighting a complex range of barriers and disadvantages faced by these groups wishing to enter the labour market.

The findings from this project will be brought to the attention of policy makers in the hope that it will be fed into Government and local authority Lifelong Learning strategies.

The European Social Fund invests in projects to improve the prospects of those who face the greatest obstacles in finding, keeping or regaining employment and looks to fund programmes, which revive and develop people’s potential.

This Handbook is produced by European partners from the following countries: England, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Scotland and Spain and summarises the good practice achieved within this transnational partnership.

The European Partners worked on a broad range of projects, which included vocational and teacher training, counselling, job search assistance, work experience and developing new resources. Features common to all projects was that we all worked with the same target groups: refugees, migrants and people from ethnic minorities - and aimed to improve future long-term unemployment through our support programmes.

Each project offers a extensive pathway approach to overcome the barriers to employment and meet the needs of these disadvantaged groups using a comprehensive approach.

Prospectus

A prospectus highlighting the Multi-lingual Careers Resource Centres achievements and plans for the future is also now available. Contact the Centre for your free copy.

Information Sheets

The translated job-search Information packs have now been revised (May 2000) and are divided into four separate sheets, which form the Employment pack. The information sheets and their contents are detailed below:

Information Sheet One – Eligibility and Rights to Employment

Information Sheet Two – Eligibility and Rights to Education

Information Sheet Three – Job Search

Information Sheet Four – Self Employment

You can request one or all of the information sheets depending on your needs.

The information sheets are all available in English and the following languages: Albanian, Arabic, Bengali, French, Portuguese, Somali, Spanish and Tigrinian.

Video cassette

An English version of our Job-search video cassette will be available at the end of June.