Good practice:

WASCO-Comprehensive assistance for people from disadvantaged background

Work integration social enterprise WASCO operates in the village Valaska, located in the region characterized by high unemployment, poverty, and many people living in substandard conditions of marginalized Roma communities. The locality also suffers from insufficient access to various public services and the low number of jobs.
A couple of years ago, Young Roma Association established a community centre in the locality. It quickly became a heard of any community-based activities and offered specialized social assistance and counselling for people in need. However, it was soon noticed that the positive impact could be stronger if a portfolio of provided services would also include income-generating activities and placement on the labour market. Therefore, in 2015 Young Roma Association established a cooperative WASCO that acts as work integration social enterprise. The subtitle of WASCO is "Laundry that triggers" and the slogan of WASCO says that "Together with your laundry, we will bring jobs to those most needed".
The social enterprise WASCO's success lies in its ability to attract various large and corporate customers, e.g. social care houses from the region, number of hotels, or the Ministry of Defence for whom they wash the presidential guard's uniform. They succeeded to gain consumers also from abroad, namely hotel chain from Austria.

WASCO operates in its building. This was acquired in desolate conditions and self-reconstructed by WASCO.
The equipment and machinery were purchased through the loan. The salaries of the disadvantaged employees are subsidized through the national active labour market policy measures.

WASCO operates in a highly competitive segment of the business, which is laundry services. WASCO is currently giving a job to 31 people, primarily women. They succeeded to gain consumers also from abroad, namely hotel chain from Austria. All founders and management members of WASCO are Roma. In Slovakia, the country strongly influenced by anti-Roma sentiment; this is a crucial moment, forcefully arguing against negative attitude toward Roma.

The critical challenge is high competition in laundry services and a high level of automatization in the business, which may significantly impact its final price. WASCO is a work integration social enterprise. It means that the job in WASCO should be an interim step to open the labour market.

WASCO is an example of a creative solution to a specific problem, which, in this particular case, is high unemployment and low educational and social profile of potential employees. Instead of placing people on public work, WASCO came with the concept of full, despite temporary, employment. WASCO's strength is its ability to provide, along with employment, comprehensive social counselling and provide comprehensive assistance to their employees and potential employees, including services addressing their family members.
Integration of employment with social counselling proved to be an effective way to increase the employment prospect for people distant from the labour market. An example of WASCO demonstrates that to have a job is only a part of the whole spectrum of services helping people to overcome their difficult situation. The focus should move more towards to integration of a variety of highly personalized services.