Acting Collectively for Girls' Integration

The young people of the Mistral Lys Rouge Camine (a priority district of the city's policy in the Grenoble metropolitan area), and especially girls, face great difficulties in their socio-economic integration. With an activity rate of 27.7% compared to 44.3% for boys, girls are more excluded from the labour market, but also from the public sphere. This is due in particular to the weight of gender stereotypes that confine young girls to traditional reproductive roles (domestic and family care).

To promote the professional integration of these young girls, we work with local partners (Centre socio-sportif Le Plateau, Mission Locale, CODASE) to develop their power to act, so that they become actors in their lives and able to change their situation. It is notably through the practice of sport that they will (re)appropriate mixed public spaces and that they will be able to benefit from social support adapted to their needs.

Besides, professionals of integration and youth will be made aware and trained to take into account the specific obstacles linked to the integration of girls and to guide them in a gender-neutral way (training, occupation, leisure, etc.). Finally, spaces for dialogue will allow the families of these girls and, more broadly, the inhabitants of the district to discuss gender inequalities.

Having means to combat prejudices

Due to a global geopolitical context which constantly stigmatizes the most vulnerable populations, the immigrant people are particularly exposed to prejudices and they are still too often discriminated against because of common beliefs.

In order to fight the resistances and growth of these prejudices, acting alongside young generations allows building the foundations of a tolerant and inclusive society. Young people need to have information within a context and reference points on immigration issues. Their abilities to understand migration phenomenon and to act as enlightened citizens depend upon that.

Through ‘Dé-chiffrons les migrations’ project, we provide tools to volunteers and professional associative members so they can plan discussions and exchange sessions with young people and implement awareness actions on migration issues.

Sharing our knowledge, strengthening our actions

Since the 90’s, Algerian organizations are very committed around the questions of access to rights for the most vulnerable people, especially in the social field. Progressively, they have built a real ‘savoir-faire’ and reliability in the eyes of the populations and local authorities.

Nevertheless, these organizations are often still not involved in local development politics and they have difficulties sustaining their actions in the long term.

SAARA project aims at promoting Algerian organizations’ key role and encouraging their integration into local dialogue process.

Working together to fight discrimination

Many activist organizations based in the Ile-de-France region and working for gender equality support the implementation of efficient actions to reduce inequalities. However, those organizations experience difficulties when it comes to promoting their actions because they don’t have the tools to assess their impact and the changes they generate.

For the past ten years, we have contributed to empower our Mediterranean partners in the field of women’s socio-economic integration and/or professional equality. Thanks to this experience and partnership, we have developed a ‘savoir-faire’ in terms of monitoring-evaluation. The aim of the E’Changeons project is to make the tools and methods of analysis we have developed available to the Ile-de-France organizations working on promoting equality.

Besides, E’Changeons project highlights the reciprocity between our Mediterranean and Ile-de-France partners. They indeed work together on an advocacy document, based on their respective field of experience, in order to deconstruct gender stereotypes.

Pooling resource to make its own business successful in Mediterranean area

All around the world, economic inequalities between women and men are still very strong. Yet, many studies explain the importance of women’s status and the role they have to play for developing an equal and inclusive society.

Working for more than 10 years with our Mediterranean partners (Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt), we helped them implement several projects aiming at improving the status of women through their social and economic integration. Many women already benefit from trainings and/or create their own income-generating activity.

With our partners, we are now focusing on the formalization of those micro-companies thanks to the implementation of collective enterprises. The entrepreneurs are then able to share resources and skills, ensure the sustainability of their activities and benefit from social advantages such as social security. As the entrepreneurs share skills and pool resource, they can better ensure the sustainability of their business and benefit from social care. Meanwhile, an action-research approach will contribute to promoting the efficiency and relevance of the micro-companies’ supporting process to public authorities.

Supporting differently vulnerable immigrants

Many Parisian organizations, in charge of supporting immigrants in vulnerable situations, agree on the same observations. Indeed, the majority of these people haven't resort to their rights, have difficulties in accessing health care and are absent from social and civic participation bodies.

In order to identify the levers for improving the social and civic integration of these people, we are working on the co-construction of a local dynamic between organizations. The objective of this group of actors is therefore to learn from the practices of one another, in order to strengthen their efforts to support vulnerable migrant populations.

To this end, we ensure the animation and structuring of the group through workshops for the exchange of practices, training, design of information/awareness tools on the intercultural approach... We also offer these different actors support in the experimentation of new accompaniement and/or partnership modalities. The purpose of these experiments is to be able to draw lessons from them and to formalize them so that they can be shared with other organizations.

Promoting his/her savoir-faire thanks to international mobility

Nowadays, finding a job is real challenge, and even more so in some fields. Job hunting is even more complicated for young people without diplomas or with any significant work experience.

In partnership with the Ile-de-France Regional Council, we launched in 2002 the MOBIL’Hanoï program. It gives job applicants from the Ile-de-France region the opportunity to complete a 6 month placement within a Vietnamese company. An intercultural environment allows job applicants to develop professional and personal abilities, very much appreciated by recruiters.

Before the trainees’ departure, we provided them with a one month language and intercultural training. Then, we ensured personal follow-up all along their stay thanks to our local branch in Hanoi.

The MOBIL’Hanoi program ended in April 2016, since the return of the eleventh session of trainees. We hope to re-launch again this kind of mobility program soon, and continue offering other unemployed people a true professional opportunity !

Empowering Algerian organizations

During Algeria’s black decade (the 90’s), the associative movement was very much weakened. For the past ten years, the civil society organisations are making their voices heard again, and many others have emerged in the social field. Their actions are essential to face the urgent issues on the field, even though they often don’t last because of volunteers’ turnover and lack of resources.

Through the FORM’Algérie project, we provide training intended for civil society organisations. Throughout the first project’s period, young associative managers were trained to become trainers as well. Today, they are able to train other organisations working in their respective local area (Adrar, Algiers, Akbou, Constantine, El Oued and Oran).

Achieved in February 2016, those actions continue through the SAARA project.

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Supporting young people towards associative sector jobs

In Algeria, the 18-35 years-old generations represent 70% of the national population and are much more affected by unemployment than the older generations. Almost 1 over 4 young people don’t have a job, even though the unemployment rate of the entire active population is about 10%. Poverty and the informal economy are increasing whereas the associative sector’s potential in terms of professional integration is still unknown and underestimated by young Algerian people.

However, working within civil society organizations demands many skills (administrative and financial management, project coordination, socio-educative mediation…) that can serve a lot of business fields like renewable energies, professional training, digital technologies, tourism, sports and leisure or even health. Those activity sectors have been identified as priorities by the Algerian government and they are precisely the activity sectors Algerian organizations have invested. Identified by the Algerian government as priority sectors for employment, these sectors are precisely the ones in which numerous Algerian associations are most renowned for.

In partnership with the GRDR and two local organizations, we have been working since 2016 to support local initiatives in Oran and Khenchela. We have notably working on the creation of a toolkit on associative jobs and a directory for organizations. This approach aims at clarifying professional opportunities in the associative sector and at promoting its different jobs for young people and the Algerian employment structures.