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Formujer Argentine: Occupational Project. A training methodology to improve employability. Manual. Buenos Aires: MTEySS, 2004. (complete text only in spanish)

 

Introduction

The objective of this material is to transfer the Occupational Project's strategy as a training and counselling methodology in order to reinforce the employability of individuals.

This strategy has been developed and validated in the framework of the Regional Programme to Strengthen the Technical and Vocational Training of Low-Income Women in Latin America -FORMUJER- and we expect that it becomes a contribution to the work of trainers and counsellors in vocational training institutions, labour intermediation bodies (labour exchanges, employment bureaux) and community service organizations (NGOs, churches, neighbours' associations, etc.)

In the light of the experiences carried out, we have learned that individuals strengthen their employability when:

- they are capable of combining their experiences, capacities and needs, thus developing their competencies to face the labour context;
- they recognise themselves as the builders of their own paths, identifying their own possibilities and difficulties, as well as those offered by their surroundings.

We propose to address work on employability through training and monitoring actions designed to build individual or collective occupational projects, by men and women affected by employment problems or unemployment.

This strategy rests on the human ability to draw up self-projects. It seeks to step up personal competencies (knowledge, skills, attitudes), to improve their position in the world of work, in particular vis-à-vis situations of crisis, changes and uncertainty, which require greater leadership, autonomy and flexibility.

The approach guiding this strategy presupposes that people are subject to structural context situations and, at the same time, there are relatively autonomous spaces - individual and collective- where we can "play" with reality. Thus, the occupational project is the outcome of a negotiation between the environment's conditions and the potential attributes and interests of individuals.

This building strategy of occupational projects involves different efforts with diverse social actors of this process:

- in the case of the target population of the training, it consists of defining an action plan to improve their employment situation and to develop the necessary competencies to accomplish it;
- in the case of trainers and counsellors, this strategy systematises a methodology aimed at furnishing individuals with support for:

- building itineraries or projects concerning their labour situation in their particular life contexts;
- identifying and developing core skills for employability.

Simultaneously, it allows to enhance the quality and relevance of training for work, to the extent that it provides meaning and direction to the educational pathways chosen by individuals upon defining or building up a work project.
o For the institutions implementing this strategy, it implies reinforcing their "hinge" role, attentive to the individuals' requirements and to a social, economic and productive environment, which demands that their actors display leadership to conceive and maintain their projects.

Contents

Introduction

Organization of this material

The Occupational Project

Some basic notions on the project's idea

Key concepts in the Occupational Project's strategy

Training and counselling to develop the Occupational Project

Stages in setting up the Occupational Project:
Stage 1: Definition of the starting point: self-diagnosis and analysis of the context
Stage 2: Definition of the Occupational Project's goals and strategies
Stage 3: Definition of the plan of activities to attain the project
Stage 4: Implementation of the project - evaluation

Bibliography

Access to the complete Manual in Spanish

 

 

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