The transition to a low-carbon economy, in line with green economy principles, requires measures to provide social and economic support to the regions and social groups disproportionately affected. This transition must uphold the Just Transition principles to ensure that communities reliant on traditional energy sources, such as lignite, are not left behind.
The Skills Development and Employment Centers play a key role in ensuring a Just Transition in these regions. Through the free provision of services, the Centers offer support to the workforce and businesses, aiming to develop new skills, strengthen the local economy and create employment and entrepreneurship opportunities. This contributes to the reconstruction of areas affected by the lignite phase-out, driving local development and empowering residents, so that they can adapt to the evolving economic conditions.
What are the Skills Development and Employment Centers?
- Physical and digital structures for awareness-raising, information-sharing, and networking workers and businesses with career advisors, entrepreneurs, and mentors.
- Structures for open learning and the development of certified skills.
- Skills Observatory and Mechanism for Diagnosing the Needs of Local Labor Markets.
What does a Skills Development and Employment Center offer?
- Information and updates on the labor market and the required workforce skills.
- Individual and group career counseling and development/improvement of transversal skills.
- Entrepreneurship Counseling.
- Access to open and flexible learning programs, with an emphasis on in-demand skills.
- Certification of acquired skills.
- Linking unemployed individuals with job positions that match their qualifications and skills.
- Connecting companies with suitable and specialized personnel, according to their needs.
What is the benefit from their operation?
- Establishment of open structures for informing, advising, and supporting the local community on employment and entrepreneurship in the green economy
- Generation of new knowledge regarding the required labor market skills in the intervention areas
- Upskilling and/or reskilling of 5.000 individuals in the lignite-transition regions
- Empowering vulnerable groups through career counselling and access to open, flexible, and personalized learning programs
- Identification of new employment and entrepreneurial opportunities, with a focus on green economy
- Strengthening of local innovative economy
These initiatives are not just a response to emerging economic challenges but also an investment in human potential, community resilience, and a future full of opportunities
