The Learning Link is a global event, bringing together representatives of development learning and training institutions and their partners to share practices, strengthen cooperation, and enhance the effectiveness of their contributions to contemporary capacity development challenges. The Steering Committee of the third edition of the Learning Link is composed of GIZ, JICA and the ITC-ILO. The event will take place from 9-12 July 2013 in Turin.
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To learn more about this event please visit the website: http://link.itcilo.org/, or contact us at <link@itcilo.org> or delta@itcilo.org.
]]>The agreed operational plan focuses on a series of capacity building activities in Turin and Cameroon on social dialogue, ILS, labour migration, and training of trainers.
Participants from ENAM highly value this new partnership and look forward to it being extended to their colleagues. They appreciate the quality of the Labour Migration Academy, in particular the training methodologies that foster individual learning, as well as cross-fertilisation and knowledge sharing with countries in Africa and other regions.
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Together with the ILO STEP Portugal project, the Centre has revised, updated and improved the Guide by introducing case studies and examples of social security schemes and institutions in Portuguese-speaking countries: Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal, São Tomé e Príncipe and Timor-Leste.
The Guide is designed to help staff who oversee and manage African social protection systems to gain a better understanding of the duties they are required to carry out.
An e-version of the Guide can be downloaded from the following link: http://socialprotection.itcilo.org/pdf-and-pics/library/guide-governacao
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The Latin American Academy held in Lima in April underlined the importance of social dialogue between tripartite partners in 17 countries in contributing to the generation of strategies favouring the development of sustainable businesses
The creation of an environment that allows sustainable business to flourish is a priority strategy in the generation of more and better jobs that allow progress to be made in the fight against the informal job market in Latin America and the Caribbean.
According to a report issued by the ILO Regional Office, there are more than 58 million people with businesses in Latin America and the Caribbean (some 48 million of which are one-person enterprises) whose activities generate 79 per cent of the available jobs. These are the production units where the greatest prevalence of informal employment tends to be found.
The Academy, organized by the ILO in collaboration with the Centre, became a space for dialogue and reflection on the following themes:
as well as a tool for creating formulas to promote sustainable business development.
]]>The Centre has included the theme of sustainable tourism in its training offer on local development, with a focus on tourism as an instrument to promote economic growth in communities and simultaneously protect the environment, while reinforcing local identity and culture. This activity was made possible thanks to the collaboration with the National Commercial Apprenticeship Service (Servicio Nacional de Aprendizaje Comercial, SENAC São Paolo), which has extensive experience working in this sphere and is currently in charge of the Tourism Regionalization and Development Project (Proyecto de Regionalización y Desarrollo del Turismo) in the municipalities of the tourism regions of the state of São Paolo.
The course brought together participants from various Latin American countries, as well as one participant from Angola, meaning that the exchange of experiences of sustainable tourism practices on a local level in different locations formed a central theme of the process.
]]>Grievances and conflicts are an inevitable part of the employment relationship. The aim of public policy is to manage conflict and promote sound labour relations by creating a system for the effective prevention and settlement of labour disputes.
Labour administrations usually establish labour dispute procedures in national legislations. Systems are effective when they succeed in ensuring that the parties resolve the dispute through a consensus-based process, such as conciliation and mediation, before reverting to a tribunal or labour court.
The new guide will constitute the basis for an international workshop that will be held in English and Arabic in Turin next September. Anyone interested in the promotion of sound industrial relations will have a unique opportunity to familiarize with modern trends regarding labour dispute prevention and resolution.
The publication “Labour dispute system: guidelines for improved performance" can be downloaded here: http://www.ilo.org/ifpdial/information-resources/publications/WCMS_211468/lang--en/index.htm.
For more information, contact socdial@itcilo.org
]]>The aim of the pilot project, which includes more than 80 participants, is to investigate alternative pathways for access to work. The fully independent and integrated courses stem from an awareness that refugees have a natural flair for self-employment as they are often very resourceful with plenty of sound work experience.
The project is financed by the European Refugee Fund and promoted by the Centre, with the Italian Council for Refugees, the Micro Progress non-profit organization, Associazione Microfinanza e Sviluppo and the Municipality of Venice. The project can also call on a network of organizations that are supporting the venture.
The Centre is deploying experience it has built up over ten years of work supporting entrepreneurship as a factor in growth, employment and poverty reduction. Considering how hard it is to be entrepreneurial in Italy, especially in times of economic crisis, participants must be provided with all the tools needed to promote a solid and sustainable business start-up.
Some 25-30% of new Italian businesses fail during the first year of trading. The project sets out to buck this trend by establishing business start-up support relationships during training and the subsequent assistance stage, putting the budding entrepreneurs in touch with the world of “alternative” finance, from cooperative credit banks to microcredit institutes.
For more information: www.ideatua.it
]]>The Conference was prepared, organized and run in coordination with Phase II of the STEP/Portugal project developed by the ILO Social Protection Sector and the Cape Verde National Institute for Social Welfare. It was attended by over 100 members of the Government and public authorities, the social partners, members of Parliament, political and religious leaders, judges, journalists and representatives of civil society associations.
The Conference represented a unique occasion to analyse, discuss and raise political and institutional awareness on two key priority areas for ensuring a sustainable future for Cape Verde’s social security system: the management of social security fund investments and the management and collection of debts owed to the social security system.
The many prominent guests included the Minister for Youth, Employment and Human Resources Development of Cape Verde, Janira Isabel Fonseca Hopffer Almada, the Portuguese Ambassador to Cape Verde, Bernardo Homem de Lucena, and the Director of the International Social Security Association’s Social Security Observatory, Edmundo Martinho.
The Cape Verdean media followed the Conference closely, the country’s main public TV news programme producing the following report: http://www.itcilo.org/en/community/videos/video
For further information on the social protection training project for the PALOP, please contact Nuno de Castro: n.castro@itcilo.org
]]>Developed by the ILO and the International Organization of Employers (IOE), business continuity management is a user-friendly model to support SMEs to develop contingency plans to protect their workers and businesses from the consequences of sudden disasters.
Using a participatory, action-oriented approach, the business continuity management model provides step-by-step instructions from preparation and activation through to the steps of the risk cycle, including preparedness, prevention, response and recovery.
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Everything at the Fiji National Provident Fund (FNPF) is going well and we are in the final stage of our reform agenda, covering information and communication technology.
At the academy, I shared some of the projects we were carrying out and this resulted in the Fund being awarded international recognition: two Certificates of Merit from the ISSA in the ISSA/Good Practices Award/Asia Pacific 2012 Competition in Seoul, South Korea in October 2012, for reforming the FNPF pension scheme and promoting external financial literacy.
To enforce change for the good of our members and ultimately our countries, one has to be fearless and have the moral backbone and courage to be able to convince our political, military and monarchic leaderships based on honest and well-researched data and facts.
We have done this in Fiji. However there is still some work to be done. We have a collective sacred responsibility, since we have been educated and enlightened at the academy to ensure that our organizations change for the benefit of our members, who have entrusted us with their hard-earned savings. If there is a will, especially a “political will”, there is a way.
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This project is a concrete translation of the mission of the Centre’s Employers Activities Programme (ACT/EMP Turin) and DECP to support and enhance the capacity of employers’ organizations, amongst others, in the field of developing services for companies.
ACT/EMP Turin has developed high quality company-oriented training products in the field of OSH, which can be used by EFP for the development of a strong training portfolio in Pakistan. In addition, the Centre’s involvement in training and product development, and as the certifying authority for OSH training, will help to ensure the reputation and attractiveness of EFP training in this crucial area.
]]>The cases in the database concern disputes arising from the world of work. A few decisions on human rights outside the sphere of the world of work that are nonetheless relevant to it are also included. The decisions are presented as summaries with the full text of the decision available at the end of each summary.
Decisions can be accessed via three indices:
1. by country (in the case of decisions of domestic courts)
2. by courts (in the case of decisions of international courts)
3. by subject
and through a full text search
Some of these judgments were made by former participants in courses at the Centre on “International Labour Standards for Judges, Lawyers and Legal Educators”.
Please send us any judicial decisions you may be aware of to: compendium@itcilo.org. This will help us keep the database updated.
We very much hope this compendium of court decisions will be a useful instrument for you and will contribute to the knowledge-sharing mission of the Centre.
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The University of Turin is active at international level: its researchers are involved in projects with foreign partners and it has established joint educational courses such as bi-national degrees (The University of Turin offers its students the opportunity to achieve, through training and attendance at the institutions involved, two or more academic degrees: a master’s degree in Italy and a degree at the foreign institution) and international PhD programmes by entering formal agreements with institutions around the world and playing an active part in international partnership projects at Italian universities.
The University of Turin recently announced a new “Summer School for English native speakers” an Italian language programme specifically designed for English-speaking students sponsored by the City of Turin.
The programme will start on 3 June 2013. Information on applications and tuition fees is available by visiting http://www.ipa.unito.it or writing to: info.italianabroad@unito.it
For more information about the university, visit the website at www.unito.it, read this document or email: amiciuniversitatorino@gmail.com.
For information on the Centre’s Master’s programme, please visit the Turin School of Development.
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Yet Latin America is one of continents with the greatest inequalities in income distribution. In order to sustain growth and bolster its impact on employment, it is essential to encourage the development of sustainable companies. This involves creating a favourable environment that makes it possible to combine a legitimate quest for profit, one of the main driving forces behind economic growth, with the need for a form of development that is based on social justice and respects human dignity, environmental sustainability and decent work.
The development of sustainable companies in Latin America displays considerable advances from which important lessons can be taken and shared. This is the intention behind the first Latin American academy: “Sustainable Business Development: Competitiveness with equality”.
This academy is designed for business development policy makers and practitioners and consists of two stages: one face-to-face and one complementary distance-learning stage lasting 10 hours.
To enrol in the academy, register on line by going to the following links:
http://desemp.itcilo.org/ and click on “Register now”.
http://emld.itcilo.org/es and click on Registration
For more information, please write to us directly at: academia.empresarial@itcilo.org
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