On March 17, 2022, Employment Support Center in Kutaisi hosted its first public presentation to increase awareness about the employment support instruments offered to its potential beneficiaries. Partners, donors, employers, beneficiaries, and media attended the event and discussed the current state of the Georgian labor market, highlighting challenges and prospects for increased inclusivity.
Centers are established with the support of the European Union to provide professional and continuous support to people who encounter problems on their real journey to employment. The centers’ key role is to help beneficiaries in adjusting to and fitting in with the current labor market needs.
Single parents, persons with disabilities, pensioners, victims of domestic violence, or persons with at least three years of career gap or with no work experience at all can apply and get assistance from qualified job coaches. The job coaches have undergone an intensive training course and continue their on-the-job training in the field to ensure provision of high standard employment support services to the beneficiaries and successful management of individual employment cases. Evaluating the needs and possibilities of a beneficiary, fitting and adapting them to the real needs and expectations of potential employers, are a small part of an everyday work handled by the job coaches. Beneficiaries get continuous support to learn how to overcome all barriers faced on their own journey to employment. This can entail communication and adaptation skills, understanding how personal abilities can meet market needs, training, coaching, vacancy search and even support in communication with potential employer.
Three Employment Support Centers currently operate in two cities of Georgia, Tbilisi and Kutaisi under the EU funded project ESCape- Employment, Support, Counselling to Meet Labour Market Needs. The aim of the project is to foster employability and employment in Tbilisi and the six selected regions of Adjara, Imereti, Kakheti, Kvemo-Kartli, Samegrelo, and Shida-Kartli. In order to achieve this goal, the ESCape project entails improving the quality of employment services for “hard-to-employ” segment through the exchange of international experiences and institutional capacities. The project is being managed by a consortium, led by Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) and its 3 project partners, the State Employment Support Agency (SESA), the Democracy Development Agency (DDA), and the Education Development and Employment Center (EDEC).
Kutaisi center is managed by the consortium member organization EDEC, that possesses rich experience in the field of employment market in Imereti region.
