Växjö and JB Marks, South Africa

Project: Public skills training to create new job opportunities and fight poverty

This project is based on the municipal partnership between City of Växjö and JB Marks Local Municipality (South Africa). The three-year proposal (2019-2021) consists of 15 activities and involves also regional partners, labour-office, university, civil society and private business sector.

The project objective is to strengthen public capacity at the social welfare field by establishing a new public model for skills-training and empowerment of vulnerable social groups without jobs, resources and security.

The project objective intends to capacitate powerful, efficient and synchronized public provision of labour-market support for the vulnerable target-group. The process includes the establishment, testing, evaluation and final adoption of a new model that combines practical skills-training with theoretical education. The project will make use of practical pilot-tests in the two municipalities, which includes a multi-disciplinary approach.

When the project closes in 2021, the results and achievements will relate to three different levels:

• Municipal/regional level: new capacity when to provide efficient labour-market support.
• Individual level: vulnerable individuals/groups taking steps from poverty towards sustainable employment.
• Society level: strengthening of democracy and social inclusion while signs of poverty, insecurity and segregation are reduced.

The project is based on a win-win perspective and will be carried out with great respect to fundamental values such as sustainability, gender equality, environment and human rights.