Combating Exclusion
through Education and Training

Approach

Profile and content of the project:

• in short
• in detail

One of the White Paper's objectives is to propose ideas for action to combat social exclusion.

The pilot projects to provide new opportunities through education and training are directed at young people who lack both the basic knowledge and the specific competencies to benefit fully from training or to find employment. The guiding principle of the projects is to set up strong and lasting partnerships of local players who share a concern for the social and economic reinsertion of young people faced with exclusion.

These experiments are taking place in an area in which Member States are already active in many different ways. The European Commission's projects are intended to supplement rather than replace existing endeavours. Indeed the diversity of people's personal and social situations, and of the social and economic contexts which exist within the Community, call for a wide range of responses so as to be able to meet the expectations of the largest possible number of people. Among these responses, the present projects set out to offer, on an experimental basis, a response which is specific in terms of the resources available to it, the emphasis on mobilising local players, and the target group, that is, young people who are not looked after by any existing structure. In any event the institutional form which these projects will take, whether inside or outside the conventional educational system, will be adapted to the needs and structure of the local training systems. These projects seek to demonstrate that excluded young people in situations of great difficulty in fact possess inherent capabilities which can be developed if the proper resources are concentrated on projects to reinsert them into society and employment. Indeed it is the idea of achieving social and economic reinsertion which is central to this concept, and not any one particular infrastructure.

The European Commission's project rests on a two-pronged strategy:

• experimenting with a new type of educational site;
• linking these new sites in an synergetic fashion with structures already set up by Member States.

The close links woven in this way between new initiatives and confirmed experiences will promote very enriching exchanges, leading to concrete cooperation between partners who, for all their differences, are all concerned to offer this new opportunity to those who need it.

The fact of being connected to the various structures of the European Union and at the same time embedded in local partnerships will enable the projects to truly become local development instruments themselves, in contrast to 'ghetto building' effects resulting from some other approaches.