Assessment of Training Needs by COSPE – Cooperazione per lo Sviluppo dei Paesi Emergenti Onlus (Italy)

30 migrant women have participated in the initial research process of the project Whomen, which was carried out in Verona in the month of March 2018 through individual questionnaires and a focus group.  Women migrating from different part of the world have been involved, most of them unemployed and in search of an occupation. The women have highlighted and discussed the main difficulties and risk they face when looking for training or job opportunities, and at the same time they have analysed the main strengths they can value in order to improve their situation. Transversal and soft skills have been discussed with them in order to build up formative and training opportunities in the framework of the project.

The research wanted also to look at the general situation of migrant women in Italy, and it was highlighted that the inclusion in the labor market of non-EU women is a serious problem, at national level employment rates are ten percentage points lower than the European Community (EC) component (46.7 percent vs. 56.9 percent). In some cases, inactivity reaches values above 70 percent, as for Egyptian and Indian women, and it even exceeds 80% among women from Bangladesh and Pakistan for example.

Available services at local level have also been mapped.

The project will start from these findings in order to build up a training curriculum which will reinforce the development and recognition of women competences and their inclusion in the labor market.