Social and Employment
Place
France
Sponsor
Didier Courboillet
Grant(s)
€30,000 to the Selection Committee at 2013/12/10 €90,000 over three years, or €30,000 per year to the Board of Administration at 2014/03/17
Project leader
Association pour la réinsertion économique et sociale (Ares)
"My close familiarity with the activities showing strong demand for subcontracting and recruitment trends in low-skilled trades incline me to believe that I can guide Ares in these areas, which account for a considerable share of its sources of income and potential outreach for its back-to-work employees."
Didier Courboillet
The workforce development agency Association pour la réinsertion économique et sociale (Ares), created in 1991, is today the foremost group of workforce development agencies in the Île-de-France area. Its main purpose is to foster the integration of people outside mainstream society (homeless, unskilled youths, handicapped persons, etc.) by offering them a suitable job and social counseling. Its project is based on the rejection of exclusion, a concern for the general good and the conviction that every one, whatever his situation, can be rebuild his life through work and recovers dignity by participating in social and economic exchanges and through involvement in environmental conservation. The Ares Group accompanies over 500 persons in dire circumstances per year through six social agencies: Ares Services, Ares Atelier, Ares Coop(1), La Petite Reine, Log'ins and Ateliers.
A better prepared employee when training is completed
With the support of the Veolia Foundation and a number of sponsors involved in job issues, bridges have been created in particular with Veolia Environmental Services and Veolia Water, who occasionally call on Ares for subcontracting services or to meet the social clauses of certain tender invitations. And a dozen employees who completed their training have been hired by the group since 2008.
Propelled by this experience, the foundation is directing its efforts over the 2012-2013 period at an intensified back-to-work training program offered to persons overseen by the Ares group. The program relies on two main levers, job counseling and work. The goals range from developing the training panel to enable the back-to-work employees to upgrade their skills and also broadening the potential field by corporate field trips and professional meetings, and including regular and appropriate activities in the partner companies for a better prepared employee who has completed training.
10,000 hours of training in 2013
In 2012-2013, Ares pooled its resources and expertise in a single unit, Ares Emploi et Formation, in order to improve the employability of its target public and to boost their job opportunities. The positive results prove the effectiveness of the system, with 63% of dynamic exits (versus 40% national average - source DARES 2011); 80 partner companies (versus 30 in 2011); 10,000 hours of training (versus 7,000 in 2012); 47% of employees who benefited from skills and pre-skills training, of whom 35% also participated in corporate field trips and professional meetings (versus 38% and 18% in 2012).
This is why the Ares Group today wants to continue this program and expand it with a new three-year partnership (2014-2016). Many items are planned for the Training aspect: reinforcing the basic training and pre-skills training; and for the Job aspect: reinforcing the Empàloyment projects and the network of partner corporations. Ares ultimately wants to have 700 persons overseen by the Ares Emploi et Formation system, to expand the partner company network from 80 to 120, to enrich the training catalog to benefit 55% of the employees; and naturally, to continue to develop specific tools to improve career follow-up and to track the growing skills of the employees, like GDI (social and professional counseling software); a program to sponsor back-to-work employees by working employees and a program to simulate interviews with the partner companies and job coaching by an outside agency.
Long established support for common values
Since its creation (2004) the foundation furthers the values and projects led by the Ares Group - environment, employment and outreach - by financially supporting its projects and by facilitating the links between the project supported and the appropriate operational divisions. For the Veolia Group, these links help meet the growing challenges of technical cooperation in connection with contracts subject to social clauses, and to reinforce its relationships with its stakeholders (staff, authorities, customers) and its territorial anchorage.
The foremost player in integration in the Île-de-France area leverages its resources
The Foundation therefore quite naturally accompanies the new deployment of resources to enable a growing number of persons in dire circumstances to boost their chances of returning to work.
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(1) Located at Hourtin (Gironde), Ares Coop organizes services in rural and tourist areas and currently employs nine homeless Parisians aged over fifty. This public, totally sidelined from the working world, is beset by a large number of difficulties that preclude any notion of a return to a conventional job. They demand very specific counseling in order to give them a lasting job, a roof over their heads, as well as all the resources needed to join mainstream society.