Implementation of employment and business opportunities for senior people (50 +)

The main problem to be addressed is high unemployment rate among senior people. In Estonia there are several measures to be applied by National Authorities, Foundations and Estonian Unemployment Insurance Fund that are being implemented for reducing unemployment rate of senior people: work clubs, career services and consultations, retraining courses, etc. However the situation is still critical since the employers are not ready to employ senior people. The project is aimed to work out and test a new approach to employment of seniors in transnational cooperation. The approach takes into consideration the situation in society and labour market and proposes to help senior people by providing them with knowledge and tools for starting up their own agricultural micro enterprise or for working with disabled people. The choice of the topic depends on individual traits, preferences and skills of the target group. The transnational cooperation is necessary due to several reasons: - It provides the project participants with better opportunities for employment,  “finding their way” and acquiring knowledge through international work placements (Polish participants have work placements in Estonia and Estonian participants have work placement in Poland) - It develops participants’ international competence and cultural awareness within European dimension - It gives the project team a chance to develop their competences in a transnational team and to develop effective tools that enhance solutions provided on a local level - We are looking for Polish partners in particular since we can learn a lot in the sphere of agriculture and training in this field - Experience and competence of both countries will be used for working our effective tools and solutions - Most of our learners are Russian-speaking, so it will be easy to work with Polish partners – languages are close and plenty of words are understandable (the project team uses English)

NGO New Bridge activities include psychological consultations, organisation and carrying out of trainings for adults of risk groups (drug addicted, former prisoners, long-term unemployed, people with special needs, etc.). We provide various basic and vocational trainings in order to support their better social inclusion. The work is partly organised within various European and national projects.