'Ghent, City at Work' (Gent, Stad in Werking (GSiW)), active since 1998, is an open partnership or process to tackle unemployment in the region of Ghent.
The two largest cities in Flanders, Ghent and Antwerp, were faced in 1998 with a specific urban labour market paradox: even though the number of available jobs was relatively high, these cities (together with Genk and Ostend) still had the highest unemployment rate. The unemployment profile also differed due to the presence of more low-skilled people and non-European migrants. A first explanation was found in the age-specific urban exodus in the 90s, accompanied by increased commuting as a result of rising mobility.
A second, and more fundamental, explanation for the skewed position of (major) cities was lying in the transformation from an industrial to a post-industrial economy.
GSiW operates on two kinds of areas:
• Strengthening employment policy through the Policy Group and projects initiated by the Policy Group:
• Creating a community of partners: GSiW offers an answer to the need to develop a clear overall narrative about unemployment. The different partners can identify with this overall story and GSiW makes it possible to propagate ongoing experiments under its common umbrella.
The creation of this strongly knit community is done in
different ways: by (1) organising network events, (2)
exchange of information and (3) facilitating collaboration and
partnerships.
Main beneficiaries:
Citizens, unemployed, young people and labour intermediates in the region of the city of Ghent, with an accent on IT-illiterate and low and highly educated migrants.
Resources needed
The City of Ghent finances the partnership activities by means of operating funds and deployment of human resources provided by the Work Department. The partners make staff available for the Policy Group and for the actions / projects. They also provide logistical support if necessary.
Evidence of success
GSiW has realised many innovative projects over its 20 years of existence, which are still continued today; ‘Het Beroepenhuis’ (2000), ‘Max Mobiel‘ (2006), ‘De Punt’ (2000) and ‘Wijs aan ‘t Werk’ (2011).
Difficulties encountered
• The quality of the activated process of GSiW has been high since the beginning, but has gone through some evolution during the years by regular evaluation and adjustments. Capacity to trust each other (stakeholders) and transparency during the process is very important to keep up the quality.
Potential for learning or transfer
The cooperation model of ‘Ghent, city at work’ lies at the basis of various major initiatives against unemployment in the region. The open partnership approach transcends the regular functioning of individual organizations/ actors and can be applied in other regions. Lacuna on the local job market are jointly detected and opportunities are included. The engagement of many organizations to jointly tackle difficult employment market themes is of critical importance for its success.
Key success factors are:
• Involvement of the City of Ghent
• Involvement of the members of the Policy Group: based on their expertise, they think along and transcend the interests of their own organisation.
• Bottom-up input of the work field both for the content of the events and actions, as well as for the communication channels such as the newsletters.
• Mutual trust and transparency
• Regular evaluation and adjustment
Tags: Local, Regional, Unemployment
