KWELE - Keys for Women Economic and Labour Empowerment: Gender-based learning model for disadvantaged women to acquire qualifications for office management

The project

In the newly enlarged EU and candidate countries, women are partly left aside of the labour market, especially those assuming familial responsibilities and those lacking the chance to have had access to higher education. Private and state-owned companies require from their staff employees ICT and foreign language competences as well as strong social skills.

In this project innovative learning methods and products from 2 different previous projects will be transferred on a national basis: from Northern Ireland and Germany to Turkey, Greece, Poland and Latvia.

The transfer of innovation project aims at developing a model to empower women to become or remain competitive on the labour market and enable them to present certified qualifications to the potential employers. Above all, disadvantaged women (women with children, women less educated, urban women who have come from the countryside) will be the focus of this project, by receiving a pilot training on vocational qualifications dedicated to office management in any type of SME.

By means of a comparative survey, the employees' needs to access the labour market will be analysed. Based on this analysis an operational guide for “transfer and adaptation” will be developed. After developing a “gender-oriented” trainers’ network and adapting a specific “gender-featured” curriculum for these trainers, partners will also transfer and re-design country specific training programmes for disadvantaged women. The model is dedicated to adapt trainings within 2 steps: theoretical ones to provide basic knowledge and practical ones for employability improvement. Examination procedure and certification will also be developed and implemented. 

This process will lead to a harmonised concept of how disadvantaged women could access (again) the Labour Market. 

Dissemination activities will be a crucial part of the project to reach social and economic stakeholders directly and indirectly. The “women economic and social empowerment” model will be disseminated at transnational and local levels throughout EU Member states and candidate countries. 

For further information please see the project website.

Project partners
MAMAK Municipality, Ankara, Turkey (Coordinator)
EDUSER Consultancy, Ankara, Turkey
Entrepreneurs Development Foundation, Ankara, Turkey
Kolping Training Institution Wuerttemberg Registered Association, Stuttgart, Germany
VFA – Valter Fissamber and Associates Ltd., Athens, Greece
EuroFortis Ltd., Riga, Latvia
BD Center Consulting Pawel Walawender, Rzeszow, Poland
Ballybeen Women’s Centre, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK

Contact person
Karin Beckham, Manger of EU point projects & more
karin.beckham@kolping-bildungswerk.de 

EU-Funding Programme
Leonardo da Vinci – Multilateral Projects, Transfer of Innovation

Sum of Funding
228,243 €

Period of Funding
1.11.2007 – 30.10.2009