The Workers’ Assistance Fund (Portuguese acronym FAT) is the largest public fund in the country. Its resources stem from a 1% levy on the payroll of firms and enterprises in the formal sector. Part of them are devoted to financing the policies of the National Employment System, manpower negotiations, unemployment insurance ad programes to generate employment and income. This fund is managed by a Deliberating Council of the Workers’ Assistance Fund (CODEFAT) of tripartite and equal composition. It is chaired on an annual rotation basis by the different parties involved. Its executive secretariat is run by the Ministry of Labour.

Resources are used and channelled through Federal States and Municipalities, which for that purpose must set up local committees to consider and discuss their application.

These committees are also tripartite and of equal composition.

This decentralised and participative manner of managing public funds has been an interesting stimulus for innovative experiences. For instance, in the State of Sao Paulo the Employment and Labour Relations Secretariat (Portuguese acronym: SERT), the ILO and the Inter-Union Department of Statistics and Socio-economic Studies (Portuguese acronym DIEESE) have joined forces to launch a collective process to develop a new vocational training design for the State. The result has been the formulation of a programme called "Learning to Learn", that comprises three Projects: a Public Experimental Centre on Vocational Training; a Permanent Observatory of Employment and VT Situations, and Basic and Specific Skills.

The Public Experimental Centre brings together the three projects in a joint undertaking. A decentralised, participative and democratic working approach has been elected and adapted to local conditions. It is not actually a school, and furthermore it does not require any fixed physical premises. It operates in a flexible and novel way: its role is to "contaminate" or pass on its conception and methodological proposal to other organisations. It has developed a new institutional arrangement bringing different actors together to negotiate the supply and demand of vocational training, and create alliances to meet their interests and needs.

It aims at serving a differential public, with new or specific demands to face the changing world of labour: young persons, adult workers (employed or unemployed), entrepreneurs and employers (from both the formal and informal sectors) as well as sectors that have been traditionally marginalised.