Biodiversity and Sustainable Land Management in Europe & CIS

Chickens help fight unemployment

Current rating: 1

Poland, 5 March 2008 – The Ecochance project, run by UNDP in Poland, has achieved several goals simultaneously. Promoting biodiversity has gone together with promoting employment for excluded groups, and links have been built between treatment centres and local communities. As the three-year project ends this month, over a thousand people have been helped into work, and green legs are abundant...

Give yourself a job – Ecochance
Ecochance is a project aiming to tackle discrimination and inequality experienced by those looking for a job, and is co-financed by the European Social Fund under the European Commission's anti-discrimination initiative EQUAL. The project offers innovative help to two groups of people facing exclusion from the labour market: those with long-term absence from the market resulting from addiction and/or stay in a treatment and rehabilitation centre; and people living with HIV. Unemployment in both these groups is over 80 percent, both as a result of a lack of training and work experience and as a result of widespread discrimination on the labour market. An additional barrier to employment is the lack of systematic support for people living with HIV and former drug addicts.

The integration of these target groups into the labour market is the goal of the project, and that’s where the chicken comes in – this objective is achieved with the use of ecological tools, namely: the development of biodiversity sub-projects like breeding traditional species of fruit trees and animal breeds, especially green-legged chickens (from the old Polish tradition); use of renewable energy sources (biomass); horse riding and many others. The idea of combining protection of biodiversity (in the context of 1982 Rio de Janeiro Convention) with fighting unemployment is based on the achievements of previous UNDP programmes: the small grants programme of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the HIV/AIDS programme. Altogether, the programme helped about 1100 people – both patients in treatment centres and unemployed people in the communities local to these centres. 

The sub-projects have been developed at 12 countryside centres for drug treatment and rehabilitation all over Poland and three associations in big cities (of supportive character to the beneficiaries leaving therapy). Former drug addicts have also been supported by associations of people living with HIV. Apart from biodiversity protection, each subproject involved different individual activities, like old parks maintenance, beekeeping or boat-building.

At the same time, the project promotes legal regulations of the Polish “Plan for Development of farms for the years 2007-2013” to inspire establishment of local ecological projects in the Polish countryside with the support of the partner centres of the project.

Ecological tool – double benefit
The use of ecology turned out to be the strong value added to project activities. It gave the participants the feeling of engagement in issues important for the whole society.  Even if some of them they did not manage to get a job directly resulting from their newly acquired skills, the interest for environment stays with them as hobby for the rest of their life. Beneficiaries and local community members became aware of the importance of protection of biodiversity and put it into practice by establishing their own ecological farming.

The process of therapy from the addiction, in spite of the multiple worries of professional therapists was not weakened. Adding to the traditional therapy a bunch of intensive trainings and professional practice resulted in increased openness and mobilization of the participants thus giving them much power to strive for their own life in the open society.

Results
Click here for the official results and evaluation: English | Russian

Individual beneficiaries: New abilities and personal development of beneficiaries make the most outstanding results of the Ecochance project, and at the same time are the best indicator of it’s effectiveness. Thanks to psychotherapy, series of psychological workshops and professional training, patients who were a short time ago at risk of social exclusion through being HIV-positive, addicted to psychoactive substances and homeless, acquired a wide range of personal competences like:

• ability to articulate one’s failures and successes,
• sensitivity to the needs of others,
• self-reliance, 
• ability to form new interpersonal relations,
• self-confidence,
• feeling of self-respect and high self-esteem,
• discovering and accepting meaning of one’s life,
• readiness to face new challenges,
• ability to handle one’s relapses,
• assertiveness and social competence,
• new professional skills and reaching higher level of education,
• punctuality and work habits.

All these aspects contribute to the many cases of beneficiaries who have managed to enter the labour market, by getting employment or establishing their own company.

Rehabilitation centres have benefited: in the course of the project, the Partner centres of treatment and rehabilitation strengthened their position in local environment as they offered ecological expertise, information and support on possible development of individual ecological activities based on experiences of the project. Moreover training and therapeutic competences of the centres grew significantly and lasting cooperation between the two has been established.

The links with local communities have also been important: Opening the project to local communities helped to overcome a cliché of an addicted person and a person living with HIV as well as helped reduce discrimination suffered by these groups. Majority of local communities from countryside around Partner centres are badly affected by unemployment. Professional training and support provided by the centres empowered them and made them more active in looking for a job including the possibility of developing their own ecological projects.

And of course, the project has been good for the popiewlnianski rabbits, the green-legged chickens, the bees, biodiversity and beyond!

Recent Articles

• Tackling Rising HIV Levels in Russia, Central Asia
• New Energy for the Future: Solar Panels Online at Bratislava Regional Centre
• With Temperatures set to Rise in Next 30 Years, Croatia Fights Back Against Climate Change
• Women Caught in Net of Exploitation Helped in Belarus
• UN Day Celebrated at Slovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs