Cooperative Company – an opportunity

As a result of the inception phase for a municipality partnership, which was completed in summer 2009, the Municipality Office, the Department for Culture and Leisure and the Department for Employment and Social Services in Karlstad have the intention of running two projects in cooperation with the Gaziantep Metropolitan Municipality. The two municipalities of Gaziantep and Karlstad are formal sister/twin cities, since 2008.

The project coordinated by the Department for Employment and Social Service’s project “Cooperative Company – an opportunity” intends to develop opportunities for cooperative entrepreneurship for people that have difficulties to enter the labour market and focuses primarily on low educated women in the district of Bey Mahallesi in Gaziantep.

The goal of this project is to raise the employment rate among low educated women in the Bey Mahallesi district through education of co-operators, thereby creating conditions for and enabling them to stay on living in the district. As an additional objective, the project will provide deepened and new perspectives on these activities in operation in Karlstads kommun.

The expected results are that a specified number of co-operators will have been trained ant that the knowledge and understanding of cooperative entrepreneurship and its potential will increase in Gaziantep. In Karlstad competence and know-how will be developed by running a training programme for new target groups in a different cultural setting.

The project duration is planned for two years with two project meetings in Karlstad and three meetings in Gaziantep.