2nd year of implementation (January – December 2025)
The “Bridging the Gap” program continues for the second year, consolidating SolidarityNow’s collaboration with Alpha Bank, alongside the most vulnerable.
This year, building on the significant results from the 1st year of implementation, the program becomes even more specific, targeting exclusively the empowerment of vulnerable women to join the labour market, become autonomous and strengthen their work resilience.
“Bridging the Gap” is implemented at the Athens Solidarity Center and the women who will be supported by the special Employability Counsellor will have access to the following services:
- Individualized job counselling and professional orientation
- Job placement counselling
- Referral to partner training institutions
- Participation in skills development workshops and empowerment groups.
The focus of the initiative is on providing support to women from vulnerable groups, such as:
- Women with mental health issues or other medical conditions
- Single-parent families
- Survivors of gender-based violence
- Long-term unemployed
- Young women who are neither working nor studying, and
- Migrant and refugee women.
1st year of implementation (October 2023 – October 2024)
The “Bridging the Gap” initiative aimed to support and empower people who do not have equal opportunities to access the job market, with a particular focus on unemployed women from socially vulnerable backgrounds (e.g. women with mental health problems, medical conditions, single-parent families, survivors of gender-based violence, long-term unemployed, young women who are neither working nor studying, migrants/refugees), in order to join the labour market through the development of a network of employers throughout Greece.
The main goal of the program was to bridge the needs of the private sector and the needs for employment of people coming from specific social groups. In addition to the direct beneficiaries, the dependent members of the unemployed women were benefited as well through the program.
Results
- 100 companies committed to working conditions based on equality, diversity, and inclusion joined the project network.
The majority of the companies in the network developed are from the tourism and food service, manufacturing, cleaning, construction, customer service and other technical sectors.
Given that most of the beneficiaries of “Bridging the Gap” either do not speak Greek or are relatively newcomers to the Greek labour market, they can respond to low-skilled positions.
- 333 participants received personalised job counselling services and were linked to job vacancies in the network’s companies.
- 103 unemployed women finally found a job.
Job Fair implementation
During the implementation of the program, the Employability Services in Athens and Thessaloniki organised two job fairs.
Athens | +Ergasia: Co-organized with Odyssea | 16-17 February 2023 at Technopolis of the Municipality of Athens.
- 22 participating companies
- 850 participants
- 2000 on-site interviews
- 350 people received job offers
Thessaloniki | Job Fair, 13 March at the Blue Refugee Center
- 279 participants (refugees and migrants)
- 15 prospective employers from a variety of business sectors
- 230+ job on offer
- 770 on-site interviews
Awareness-raising actions
- Conducting an Interactive Seminar on Diversity, Equality and Inclusion in the Workplace (D.E.I.), in the framework of +Ergasia.
- Regular participation in the Employability Working Group of Thessaloniki and the corresponding Athens Coordination Center for Migrant & Refugee issues (ACCMR).
- Signing of four Memorandums of Understanding with enterprises belonging to the network.
The program is implemented with the support of Alpha Bank.
