1. 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)

2. Community Initiative EQUAL 2004 - 2008 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 73 119 mil CZK (approx. 10% of the EQUAL budget)

3. 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

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. European Social Fund 2007 - 2015 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 3.1 - 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 3.3 - Integration of socially excluded groups on the labour market (75 mil. €) The deadline of the first call is today.

7. European Social Fund 2007 - 2015 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.