Fundación Secretariado Gitano

The Fundación Secretariado Gitano begins a new experience transferring its Acceder methodology to North Macedonia. The Programme will be implemented jointly with United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and in partnership with the Macedonian Ministry of Labour and Social Policies (MLSP) as part of the four-year project Creating Job Opportunities for All funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). The project strongly focuses on enhancing the employability and facilitating employment of the most vulnerable persons, and particularly Roma, persons with disabilities and youth, as population segments exposed to multiple barriers in accessing the labour market in North Macedonia.

The project also works on designing innovative policy and programming solutions to activate Roma and other vulnerable persons in the open labour market while promoting services for broader social inclusion. In addition, it tackles economic reintegration of long-term unemployed, but also institutional and non-formal barriers and drivers of exclusion.

Within the project, the Fundación Secretariado Gitano will mainly focus on the provision of technical assistance in the process of transferring the Acceder programme methodology to North Macedonia and in the elaboration of proposals for policy change.  Expert professionals of the Acceder programme will adjust the phases, activities and tools to the Macedonian context, will train the Macedonian teams and follow their progress on the ground, monitoring their performance in order to assure a successful transference of the Acceder programme. The Fundación Secretariado Gitano will also elaborate proposals for policies that would facilitate the access to the labour market for Roma and other vulnerable groups, and policies and measures for the effective inclusion of the Acceder principles into the mainstream public social and employment policies and programmes to improve Roma access to those services.

The combination of setting up the Acceder programme and implementing the methodology in the specific setting of North Macedonia, while analysing and proposing how the programme will be embedded within public policies, makes this project a real challenge. At the same time, it gives a rare opportunity to pilot and design evidence-based targeted measures for Roma and other disadvantaged groups with a view of public responsibility to include it in the overall welfare system, as opposed to only isolated actions.

The Spanish employment programme Acceder, as an individualised, integrated and multidimensional approach for the promotion of the Roma employment, is one of the most effective initiatives for Roma people with the largest impact on their socio-labour inclusion. Based on the idea of ​​promoting the inclusion of Roma people into the labour market and especially in decent employment , this programme means a shift in the approach and continues to give very positive results both at national and European level.