The Rising Employment Stars

Currently community employment has become a common concern of the whole society. The employment and re-employment of community residents is an important link in Chinese government's effort of maintaining social stability and building a harmonious society. Community employment managers are recognised as a new way to promote community development and help unemployed people find jobs. 

By working with the Cultural and Education Section of the British Consulate-General Shanghai and Community Action which is a non-profit organisation dedicated to researching public participation in community governance and improving public participation in community development, Ningbo Haishu District adopted the employment manager concept and hold the first Employment Manager training program 12 March-4 April 2007.

With the strong supports from the Cultural and Education Section of the British Consulate-General Shanghai, an UK consultant, Tony Crocker and a Chinese consultant, Ms Song Qinghua delivered a three week training program to 39 selected potential employment managers aged from 40 to 50, focusing on employment managers' capability building. It is not for individual community employment managers only, but more importantly, it aims to transform trainees into trainers so that the training programme can be developed in the long term.

At the closing ceremony on 3rd April, all 39 employment managers received the certificate for the training program and they all said that the training changed their perceptions about the unemployment issues which they had before and boosted their confidence to work on the unemployment issues. Some participants aim to realise zero unemployment rate in their communities within three years time.

We are also expecting an innovative working system in training local community employment entrepreneurs to be developed and best practice and good experience out of it can be shared and disseminated to other regions in China via a high-level international seminar at the end of the project.

The rising employment managers are receiving certificates from the UK trainer