The Experience of Public & Non-Profit Co-operation in ESF projects Vladimír Kváča Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs ESF Management Department (Prague, FEB 27, 2009)

Community Initiative EQUAL General goal: development of innovative approaches to eliminate inequality and discrimination on the labour market and following mainstreaming of these approaches. Foreigners as a target group: 8 projects out of mil CZK (approx. 10% of the EQUAL budget)

Community Initiative EQUAL Main areas of EQUAL „foreigners“ projects‘ activities: Education, integration programmes languages (mainly Czech) socio-cultural competences IT Explaining the advantages of participation on the legal labour market Support to young asylum-seekers Lobbying in favour of liberalization of asylum-seekers participation on the labour market

Conclusions (experiences with foreigners as a target group) Integration on the labour market cannot be separated from integration to the society in general. Therefore, important areas are: language education; development of socio-cultural competences, (the importance of this point is often underestimated); but also support of cross-cultural communication competences and understanding of multiculturalism within the majority.

Conclusion (experiences with project beneficiaries - NGOs) Beneficiaries know very well the reality of the target group and are experienced in tackling its problems. Some space for improvements is in terms of efficiency of various interventions – i.e. better using of the cost-benefit analysis tools. Very useful is networking of relevant stakeholders (originally as National Thematic Network under EQUAL). However, participation of some public bodies is still limited (i.e. MoE). Present-day problem is the financing of these activities. This is related to general financing problem of non-profit sector in the Czech Rep. (and in EU-12 in general), where the reality is the overdependence of NGOs on the public money. This frequently leads to a „stop & go“ problem.

European Social Fund Human Resources and Employment Operational Programme (HREOP) managed by MoLSA) Immigrants, refugees, and „persons from another socio- cultural environment“ in general are among the eligible target groups of HREOP. These areas of support are of particular relevance: Area of support Support of social integration and social services (288 mil. €) At the moment, the results of the first call for project proposals are assessed by the selection board. New calls on the way. Area of support Integration of socially excluded groups on the labour market (75 mil. €) The deadline of the first call is today.

European Social Fund HREOP Present call for project proposals are broadly defined, the point is to: -enable the realization of large variety of projects and receive the feedback of beneficiaries‘ interests; -boost up the new programming period financing. One of drawbacks of this attitude is a large quantity of received project proposals and resulting time-consuming project selection process. In the near future we plan a strategy of small, quick and narrowly focused calls.