Newsletter - Labour Plus · Newsletter July/December 2013 - Issue no. 2 Regional Consultation...

Newsletter July/December 2013 - Issue no. 2

Regional Consultation Meetings in Nieuwegein& Newry and Mourne District, two differentsituations but the same objective, page 1

Table of contents

Nagykálló seminar: the opportunity to visit KallaiDuet Project & the ROMA Comunity Center, page 2

Content meeting in Brussels, 6th September 2013,page 4

Interview to Élise Féron. She has been working onthe baseline study on the framwork of the LabourPlus project, read more on page 3

The Labour Plus Pearl Tree tool. This is a veryuseful instrument to access to information, check iton Labour Plus project website!, page 6

The CONRED Project,

in Tenerife, an example ofintervention in schools page 5

Edited by:

Contributions from:

Development Agency of Santa Cruz de Tenerife team, supervised by Edoardo Guglielmetti (ENTP).

Shirley Keenan (Newry & Mourne District Council, IR), Marijke Bosma (Municipality of Nieuwegein, NE), Herbák Henrietta (Municipality of Nagykálló, HU) andCristóbal Díaz (Development Agency of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, SP).

To contribute the next Labour Plus project newsletter, please contact [email protected]

Labour Plus newsJuly/December 2013 - Issue no. 2 - page 1

Communication subjects to:

ENTP - European New Towns & Pilot Cities PlatformRue du Canal / Vaartstraat 65, 1000 Brussels, Belgium

Phone:

Fax

+32-2 217.97.42+32-2217.97.48:

To keep an eye on Labour Plus news and events, follow us at www.facebook.com/LabourPlusProject

Regional Consultation Meetings in Nieuwegein & Newry and Mourne District,two different situations but the same objective

Two of the Labour Plus project officers, were asked about the Regional Consultation meetings that were planned to celebrate in theirmunicipalities. Mrs. Marijke Bosma and Mrs. Shirley Keenan talk about these events.

Ms. Marijke Bosma,Municipality of Nieuwegein

Content Manager

1. When is it planned to take

place?

2. What are the main objectives

you want to aim in your RCM in

your municipality?

3. What kind of guests are

attending to your RCM? What

Kind of institutions / people /

stakeholders?

4. What are your expectations

about the results of your RCM?

The Regional ConsultationMeeting in Nieuwegein will takeplace on Tuesday 3 December2013.

The main theme of the RCM is"Vulnerable youth". We will focus

the meeting on the access andparticipation of vulnerable youthin school, work and care in ourregion.

What we aim for is that wewould like to receive input fromall professionals how to improvethe current situation in work,school and care for vulnerableyouth, especially during thisperiod of economic crisis.

In the Netherlands, at themoment a decentralizationprocess takes place of allresponsibilities and budgets ofyouth care. Currently theprovinces and the centralgovernment are responsible forthis field, but from 1 January2015 the municipalities will takeover this responsibility. Thereforeit is of great importance that weget more insight in the currentsituation of special vulnerable

groups among the youth,including Roma.

The interviews with allprofessionals already providedus with a lot of information onwhich things are well organizedat the moment, but also on thechallenges for the future. Duringthe Regional ConsultationMeeting we will discuss theoutcome of the interviews andfocus on future improvements.

As a preparation on the RCM weperformed interviews with 15stakeholders. They all work withvulnerable youth, but from adifferent perspective: schools,Social Affairs, youth workers,youth care, the police, municipal

policy workers, case manager,etc. In total we expect 17stakeholders to participate.

Based on the outcome of theRegion Consultation Meeting wewill write a local implementationplan, which will also have a focuson vulnerable youth (includingRoma). In 2014 a provincialbudget will be available to us fororganizing a pilot in the field ofvulnerable youth and theiraccess to work, school and care.We will use the input of allprofessionals participating in theRCM to formulate this pilotproject.

Mrs. Shirley Keenan,

Newry and Mourne District CouncilLabour Plus Project Officer

Our Regional ConsultationMeeting will take place on 26thNovember 2013, it will be held inNewry Banquet andConferencing Centre.

Our main objective is to ensurethat our local and regionalstakeholders engage in ameaningful conversation aboutlabour inclusion of migrantworkers and Irish Travellers. Wewill discuss the challenges weare facing in the currenteconomic situation, the changesin migration patterns and howwe can find ways to addressthese challenges and improveLabour Market Integration. Weaim to produce policyrecommendations that we canuse to inform our LocalImplementation Plan.

We have guests attending fromCentral Government, forexample, representatives fromthe Equality Unit at the Office ofFirst Minister/Deputy FirstMinister and representativesfrom the Department ofEmployment and Learning. Wealso have representatives fromour Ethnic Minority SupportCentre. Various departments ofNewry and Mourne DistrictCouncil will be in attendance,along with the Chamber ofCommerce and local businessrepresentatives.

We are excited about theConsultation and we are happythat so many stakeholders haveagreed to take part. We areconfident that thesestakeholders can agree on policyrecommendations that willimprove labour inclusion inNorthern Ireland and we arehopeful that our discussions willprovide assistance to ourImplementation Plan.

1. When is it planned to take

place?

2. What are the main objectives

you want to aim in your RCM in

your municipality?

3. What kind of guests are

attending to your RCM? What

Kind of institutions / people /

stakeholders?

4. What are your expectations

about the results of your RCM?




Phone:

Fax

+32-2 217.97.42+32-2217.97.48:

To learn more about Labour Plus project and to view recent developments, visit the website at www.labourplus.eu

Kállai Duet Qualitative County Local ProductProgramme

On November 9th, members of the Labour Plus project, visited the KállaiDuet project. This was an activity organized by the municipality ofNagykálló in the framework of the seminar development in that city. Therethey had the opportunity to meet the project leaders and some ROMAparticipants so they could exchange experiences and information aboutthe Kállai Duet project.

The strategic aim of this programme is to find markets for local goodquality agricultural products and introducing “two steps” labour force –

market integration and supporting small agricultural enterprises by extraincomes.

The main project elements are:

1. Agricultural public work programme –

involving 50 persons – including Romas –

i n t o i n t e n s i ve ve g e t a b l e g row i n g(Hungarian paprika) activities. The wages ofthe involved persons and the neededinstruments are financed by public workprogramme of Ministry for Home Affairs ofHungary. All the other materials necessaryfor vegetable producing were sponsored byKITE Joint stock company. The Municipalityof Nagykálló provided the agricultural landsnecessary for vegetable growing activities.

2. Supporting local traditional farmers andsmall agricultural enterprises to find newmarkets. The Kállai Duet Public Foundationcollects the local-grown products, labelsthem with the name of the producer farmerthen take the products to the very near

county seat markets (10 kms) by their owntrucks and employees. At county seatmarkets the Foundation sells the productsby non-profit way. The whole system issupporting the small scale agriculturalp r o d u c i n g s e c t o r a n d p r o v i d i n gsupplementary income for producers.

3. Creating a Fruit and Vegetable FarmerOrganization – Supporting local traditionalfarmers and small and medium sizedagricultural enterprises to find new markets;for better processing of products and forfinding better freezing possibilities thefarmers situated in the township and micro-region of Nagykálló were united into acommon cooperative including Kállai DuetFarmer Ltd as well. Kállai Duet Farmer Ltdwas granted by a 1 billion HUF allocation forcreating a freezing, -manufacturing- andpacking industrial investment which is

under construction now. Kállai Duet FarmerLtd is supporting the getting known of thebrand of local county products by marketingactivities.

In the framework of the project all targetgroups are involved and the municipalitysupports their labour force and agriculturalactivities and gives chances for them inthese fields.

Since 27th April 2013 the Roma Community Housegives facilities to spending free time on a usefulway regardless of age or gender. At the beginningeveryone has reservations about the house butgained good experience, staff 's attention,kindness and helpful attitude the local peopleovercame their fears. Today, the community centeris considered like their second home.

We asked some youngsters to tell their opinionsabout the house. Most of them are happy to beinginvolved at the colorful program facilities. Themost frequented programs are the followings:healthy day, competition of computer games,arts& crafts, gardening, tree planting during theEarth Day, etc.The house's other unique possibilityto provide learning support for kids and officialadvices for adults. Some afternoons, whenchildren and parents playing music together,

singing and dancing, in which case, of course, thehouse continue to open. Friday is the cleaning day,the staff with children, parents and grandparentsare tidy up the house and the courtyard.

During the Nagykálló seminar, the partners of theLabour Plus project visited this Community Houseand they had some exchanges of impressions withsome of the users of this resource.

RomaCommunityHouse atAkácos street




Phone:

Fax

+32-2 217.97.42+32-2217.97.48:


1. How did you approach this work? What

was the methodology you used?

2. What were the main difficulties you

faced?

First I had to familiarize myself with all theinformation gathered by partners on theirspecific local contexts. Situations on theground are incredibly diverse, and thebaseline studies provide a wealth ofinformation in this respect. One of the mostimportant parts of my work has been tohighlight the main similarities anddifferences between cases, as well as themain challenges faced by local authorities inthe setting up and implementation ofpolicies towards Roma communities.

Two main issues stood out of this review : thefirst was that local authorities had quitedifferent ways to approach the issue ofintegration, and were following what lookedlike different “models” of integration. Thesecond issue that came up was that localauthorit ies and members of Romacommunities interviewed for the purposesof the project held different views onintegration, and on what could be done inorder to further the integration of Roma ormigrant communities.

In order to better study these two issues Icame up with a new methodology designedto allow for the comparison of local models

of integration policies, and of views onintegration held by both local authoritiesand target groups. This methodologyprimarily builds on a visual tool (radar charts)designed to “measure” on the one handexpectations of various target groups, andon the other hand policies set up at the locallevel. It has been built around a scale, whichis flexible enough to account for varioustypes of policies and for various degrees ofintegration (or lack thereof ).

I have also decided to measure inclusionalong several dimensions: employment;education; language; housing; mobility andsocial relations (participation), which eachconstitute an axis of the radar charts. Thismapping of integration policies has allowedme to map patterns of inclusion, to identifygaps between individual needs – or at leastbetween what individuals say they need –

and implemented policies, and also toident i fy loca l pol ic y models . Thismethodology has also proved useful tocompare across cases, and acrosscommunities.

The main difficulty I faced was that theinformation compiled by partners, as well as

the various reports they have drafted, madeu p s e v e r a l h u n d r e d s p a g e s o fdocumentation, which were extremelydifficult to synthesize for comparativepurposes. Local situations are so diverse thatcomparing them at first seemed almostimpossible.

Another difficulty was that interviews donewith members of target groups have oftenbeen difficult to interpret, because it seemsthat Roma and other target groups haveoften given socially accepted answers to thequestions they were asked, and sometimestheir behavior seemed at odds with theseanswers. Also, in some cases, because of timeand resource constraints, only a fewinterviews were made, which were notnecessarily representative of the wholetarget group, not to mention the wholemigrant/Roma groups. As a consequence, Ihad to be careful not to over-interpret data,and I had to keep my generalizationsmodest. Fortunately, the methodology Ihave used allowed for a nuanced analysis,and I think that it has adequately capturedthe great diversity that can be observed atthe local level.

Interview to Élise Féron.She has been working on the baseline study on the framework of the Labour Plus project

Élise Féron is a Senior Lecturer inInternational Conflict Analysis at theBrussels School of International Studies(University of Kent) and a researcher atthe Conflict Analysis Research Center(CARC, University of Kent). She is alsoassociated researcher and invitedprofessor at the Université Catholique

de Louvain (Belgium), the UniversitéNationale du Burundi, the UniversitéLumière de Bujumbura (Burundi) andthe Diplomatic Academy of Yerevan(Armenia).

Her research interests include:community and minority conflicts,diaspora politics and questions ofidentity. Since 2000, she has beenworking on several projects fundedunder the 4th, 5th, 6th and 7thFramework Programmes of theEuropean Commission. She has beenthe general co-ordinator of “PEACE-COM - Peace processes in communityconflicts: From understanding the rootsof conflicts to conflicts resolution”

(2004-2007), as well as the researchdirector of “INFOCON - InternationalCivil Society Forum on Conflicts” (2008-2011), a project whose main objectivewas to assess the role and impact ofvarious diaspora groups in conflictescalation and maintenance, but also inconflict prevention and resolution.

She has been asked to prepare a reporton the baseline studies prepared withinthe frame of the Labour Plus project.




Phone:

Fax

+32-2 217.97.42+32-2217.97.48:


3 . W h a t a r e t h e m o s t i m p o r t a n t

conclusions you drew?

One of the most important conclusions thatcame out of this exercise is that on averagepolicies and needs do not seem to “read”

needs pertaining to integration in theexactly same way. However, one should notcome too quickly to the conclusion thatpolicies are not adequately designed and“miss” the most important aspects ofintegration. Local policies are sometimesrapidly evolving, and the fact that they arenot tackling such and such issue right nowdoes not mean that this issue isn't addressedby national or regional policies, with whichlocal policies are complementary. Thegreatest average discrepancies betweenexpressed needs and local policies can befound in the field of employment. This isboth a field where the most pressing needsare expressed, and the field where the mostsignificant policies are implemented. Suchan observation is worrying, and mightsuggest that policies in this field are nottotally effective and well targeted. However,most of the stakeholders interviewed withinthe frame of this project spoke about thedifficulties induced by the economic crisis,and unemployment is of course not limited

to migrant and Roma communities, butaffects all sections of the populations. Onecould thus hypothesize that this discrepancyshould not primarily be interpreted as afailure of integration policies, but morebroadly as a result of an otherwise extremelydifficult economic context.

Discrepancies are also significant in thefields of education, mobility and housing.Among these fields, housing probablydeserves specific attention since it featuresamong the most important needs expressedby the target groups, and is met by initiativesof a rather modest size. This should probablybe interpreted in light of public/privatehousing balance and availability.

A few words should be also said aboutaspects of integration that matter to theindividuals, but that were not included in theanalysis. Among these aspects, legal issuesseem to really stand out, and are mentionedby many interviewees who struggle with thefact that accessing the labor market is oftennot possible without a permanent residencepermit, and vice versa. We did not includethis aspect in our analysis for an obviousreason: in the cases analyzed in this report –

and, actually, in most cases everywhere in

the world – such issues do not depend onlocal authorities, but strictly remain withinthe competences of national States. But thefact that these issues came out almostconstantly in the interviews, especially formembers of target groups not originatingfrom EU countries, demonstrates thatintegration cannot happen in the absence ofa coordination between national and localpolicies. While local authorities deal withmost of the“practical”aspects of integration,such as employment, housing or schooling,integration cannot happen in the absence ofthe general and legal frame that the State isthe only one to provide.

Élise Féron during the presentation of her research conclussion tothe Labour Plus project partners

Content meeting in Brussels

The partners of the Labour Plus project met in Brussels on the 6th ofSeptember to take stock of the project's progress and to organize aworkshop. It was an opportunity to meet before the site visit to Sofiain October 2013 and the meeting in Nagykallo in November.

During this meeting, several issues related to the technical content ofthe project were presented.

Mrs. Elise Féron, researcher from Kent University contracted withinthe framework of the project, presented the report on the baselinestudies. The report has been drafted on the basis of the informationpartners provided when completing the questionnaires andinterviews during the first year of the project.

Regarding the transfer of good practices, an update was made in thecontent meeting. All partners gave information about the state ofthe art of each country good practice implementation. Some ofthem, were interested in visiting the projects on their location to

improve the knowledge of each good practise.

Two consultants from Newry and Mourne, Conor Patterson andCanice Hamill, presented the Labour Plus online tool to share theNewry and Mourne experience. Through working with the tool,partners have four steps, or four nodes: Statistics and research, thestakeholders organizations; the challenges like languages andcultural differences, absence of advocates in the communities, lackof information, effect of the economic crisis, fragmented leadership,migration as an increasing phenomenon; and the best practiceshub- with database, welcome and support for Migrants and Roma,training professionals working with the target group, anti-racismwork, etc. it is like a tutorial for a new staff, for a politician. The bestpractices guide would be accessible.




Phone:

Fax

+32-2 217.97.42+32-2217.97.48:


On the 28th and 29th of September 2013there was a meeting with Youngparticipants of the CONRED Project, inthe Employment Agency of Sociedad deDesarrollo. This meeting was a uniqueopportunity to find out what the projectworks about multicultural integration ineducational establishments of themunicipality.

Also, that meeting was an opportunity toreveal LABOUR PLUS project, theactivities planned and its benefits, andthe services of Sociedad de Desarrollo.

Something about CONRED Project:

Citizen Participation Service of towncouncil of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, haslaunched its second edition of theNetwork Project for the Cit izenCoexistence (CONRED), in somesecondary school establishments of thecommunity.

This Project is being developed in 2013,w h i c h a i m s t o p r o m o t e e q u a lrelationships, diversity and multiculturalcoexistence education and citizenp a r t i c i p a t i o n i n t h e e d u c a t i o n

community.

The first phase, the CONRED Projectpromotes training courses for pupils infive secondary schools (IES) aboutmanagement and multicultural conflict-resolution, diversity and principles ofcivic participation.

In the second phase, there will beworkshops in the schools to promotecivic awareness among students,teachers and families.

The last phase is dedicated to design anddevelop actions with citizen associations.

The main selection criteria for the chosenfive educational establishments was tofollow up the activities of the chosenones in year 2012 and the figures offoreign students of each educationalschool. A total of 120 youth are takingpart voluntarily in this project.

This line promotes networks of localcitizen associations, such as, youthassociations, women associations,f o r e i g n e r s a s s o c i a t i o n s , s p o r t s

associations, cultural associations,neighbourhood associations, LGTBIassociations, etc.

Citizen associations that take part inCONRED Project have proposed topromote cooperation and exchangeactions between them. Within thisframework the intercultural perspectiveand its management is transversal. Thisinitiative solves a wide range of activitiesand services offered by associations,from collaboration & exchange schemes.

CONRED Project emerges from theconfluence of multiple participatoryinitiatives, for example: Red de entidadesciudadanas and Santa Cruz Diversaproject, among others. All these actionsare included in the First MunicipalIntercultural Coexistence Plan of SantaCruz deTenerife.

CONRED Project, LINE 1

CONRED Project, LINE 2

The CONRED Projectin Tenerife, an example of intervention in schools




Phone:

Fax

+32-2 217.97.42+32-2217.97.48:


1. What is it? What is it for?

2. How can people access to this tool?

3. Who were the responsible people for development?

The Labour Plus Pearl Tree Tool is a very exciting development in the Project. It is a guide toEuropean best practice in supporting the labour market integration of Roma, Irish Travellers andmigrants. Each Labour Plus partner has populated the pearl with their information, creating a toolcompromising of information that everyone can access and learn from. This is “Exchange ofExperience” at the click of a button!

Very easily! One of the main advantages of the tool is its accessibility. Simply go to the Labour PlusWebsite ; www.labourplus.eu, click on Pearltrees along the top and a new page will open with a linkthat will take you immediately to the Labour Plus Pearltree!

The Newry and Mourne partner accepted the challenge of creating the Labour Plus Tool. We retainedthe services of two consultants Dr Conor Patterson and Mr Canice Hamill, they conductedworkshops with the other Labour Plus partners in order to find a tool that suited the needs of allpartners. We worked closely with Dr Patterson and Mr Hamill in order to design the structure of thetool and to ensure it would be populated with the right type of content. It is still a work in progress

The Labour Plus Pearl Tree toolThis is a very useful instrument to access to information, check it on Labour Plus project website

Newsletter - Labour Plus · Newsletter July/December 2013 - Issue no. 2 Regional Consultation...

Documents

Transcript of Newsletter - Labour Plus · Newsletter July/December 2013 - Issue no. 2 Regional Consultation...