A Sino-German project aimed at helping unemployed women get jobs has helped thousands of women in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province since it was implemented nearly five years ago. 

According to Michaela M. Baur, the project's German director, the project includes re-employment training, temporary work, vocational counseling and business creation.

"The project is not only involved in the training of our target group, unemployed women, but we also deal with the training of vocational and business creation counselors, trainers of our qualification courses and experts from the labor administration," Baur said.

Statistics show that from April 1999 to the end of last year, 984 re-employment training classes were held in the city under the guidance of the project, which included training for domestic servants, marketing management, office communication and even training in the IT sector.

Altogether over 46,000 people have taken part in the training classes, among whom over 24,000 were laid-off women. Ninety-seven percent of the women were qualified to find work after the training sessions, and 75 percent of them have found jobs.

The concept of temporary work companies was introduced to the city by German experts in 2000. And in 2002, the Jiangsu Huiyou Labor Service Corporation Limited and the Gulou Human Resource Service Centre were appointed as major sites.

At present, the two recruitment companies have signed contracts for temporary employment with more than 100 companies, and have over 3,500 members, among whom more than 60 percent are laid-off women.

And according to a survey of 79 women who started their own businesses, 91.1 percent of their companies have been operating smoothly for more than one year, among which some employ many people.

For example, Huang Ruomei established Tianyun Lake Farming and Herd Corporation Limited in 2000, after participating in the business creation training classes. The company owns a lamb breeding farm and a lamb restaurant, with more than 30 employees.

"Nanjing has benefited in many aspects from the project," said Yin Min, deputy director of the Nanjing Municipal Labor Administration. "It has changed our concepts and taught us many new methods of vocational training, such as individual counseling and interactive training."

The project, entitled the Sino-German Technical Cooperation Project for the Reintegration of Unemployed Women into Working Life, is one of the first bilateral cooperation projects in the labor field in China. Its total implementation time is eight years.

(China Daily March 16, 2004)