employability

HOME - Homeless Onto Meaningful Employment

Jobcentreplus - co financed 01/04 - 12/06
The HOME Project is to provide longer term pathways to stability and thereby employment for the target group and to provide a wider range of paid work experience and training options for our beneficiaries, together with opening up additional options for self employment and entrepreneurship.

Objectives:

• To deliver a supportive work experience environment
• To provide complementary targeted training to beneficiaries

The HOME programme consists of six interlinked activities:

1. Work experience in a supportive environment in a textile recycling workshop manufacturing woven and machined textile products
2. Work experience in a supportive environment in an e-trading training programme selling the textile products and services over Ebay
3. Job search support and mentoring for all project beneficiaries
4. Delivery of entrepreneurship training, using the tested Everyone's A Winner curriculum
5. Delivery of a range of basic skills training to project beneficiaries, working towards and achieving recognised qualifications

Activities 1-3 (supported employment)

Delivered by Aspire.

The supported employment activities are centre around the production of woven and machined recycled textile products as well as an online Ebay business training. Thus the beneficiaries will experience the full business cycle, from procurement and manufacturing to online sales and after-sales. This project worker will deliver day to day support, guidance and advice to beneficiaries on basic business skills based on Aspire's tested and successful social enterprise model, and will continually link current activities with signposting future job and training opportunities.

Activities 3 and 4 (training)

Delivered primarily by Toucan.

The training will be delivered in supportive and non-threatening surroundings by experienced trainers. The curriculum will be based on the NCFE Level 1 Certificate for IT Users (NVQ 1 equivalent) although significant flexibility will be inbuilt.

The ‘Everyone's A Winner’ course will be based on the setting up of a real community enterprise, decided on by the participants. This enterprise will run for a day at the end of the course, giving the participants a real taste of a real start up. Toucan's experience has shown that the course inspires motivation and real learning in participants.