Wednesday morning three representatives met to discuss how they each worked to secure the skills needed for the future and a green transition.
In the outskirts of Gothenburg in Sweden a distinct partnership has been made.
A car company, a private real estate company and a public real estate company has joined forces to tackle one of the great issues facing several suburbs in Sweden:
People, who aren’t taking part in society.
Celine Domecq, public affairs director of Volvo Car Corporation, shed light on this joint mission during the panel discussion “Securing the inclusive skills of tomorrow” that took place in the EU Week of Regions and where the hope was to exchange ideas and inspire each other to new ways of re-skilling vulnerable workers and securing the proper skills for a green transition.
The joint venture is focused on the borough of Tynnered. A borough with a population of approximately 28.000, a fairly high percentage of immigrants and a problem.
In 2017 the Swedish police placed the district in the most severe category of urban areas with high crime rates.
And as Celine Domecq pointed out during the discussion: “Drugs and gangs are an issue”.
So, in order to help fix this problem, Volvo, the public real estate company Framtiden, and the private real estate company Stena Fastigheter joined forces in 2021.
Among several goals they wanted to create more jobs for the youth and adults, create more housing solutions, and secure better grades on average for the school pupils than in the rest of Gothenburg.
Later in 2021, Tynnered was no longer a distinct vulnerable area according to the Swedish police.
The project in Sweden was, however, only one of three projects discussed at the session in the Jacques Delors Building in Brussels.
Conservation of nature and reskilling refugees
The low-ceilinged room where the session was being held were well visited by people from Norway, Sweden, Spain and other European countries. And the panel also found representation from Viken in Norway and Madrid in Spain.
In southern Europe the Madrid based public job agency Agencia para el Empleo de Madrid, which was represented by Carmen Gutierrez Olondriz has created two programmes in order to help reskill vulnerable people, migrants, and refugees with a focus on jobs needed for the green transition.
And in Norway the vocational school Fagskolen in Viken has started a very specific programme to reskill people to secure conservation of the nature. Training mountain bike enthusiasts in mountain bike trail building is for them a way of reskilling people, securing a sustainable way of building mountain bike trails, and improving the tourism business of Viken.
There is no way of saying whether the inspiration successfully crossed the borders from Norway, through Sweden and to Spain – as well as the other way around. But leaving room JDE 51 a subtle sense of satisfaction was to be seen on the faces of the participants.
Edited by Nina Bo Wagner
