During the Italian interior ministry’s 2016 “Good Reception Charter” initiative, the “Start Refugees” platform was born as a new online method for connecting asylum seekers and refugees with employment so that they might become financially independent, and in turn, properly establish themselves in their new residence.
The project, whose goal is job integration and social innovation, ultimately “allows dialogue between demand and supply of temporary employment: individuals or companies on the one hand, social cooperatives and/or organisations involved in providing reception services for asylum seekers and refugees on the other”.
Users can upload their personal profiles to the platform, which are then made available to potential employers. To access the profiles, prospective employers must simply register and then choose the area of employment they’re looking for, and can give feedback on performance.
The service runs on a paid basis for NGOs alone, but staff are always available to assist at reception centers for completion of profiles as well as aid with the inevitable bureaucratic procedures. The reception centers “need only to register and interact with our staff to decide how many subscriptions or profiles to insert and purchase”.
The platform comes with an easy search function – though it is currently limited to the area of Liguria with plans to expand to the rest of the country as soon as permitted.
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