Project “Development and approbation of motivation programs for improving the life quality and facilitation of employment” (September 2006 – October 2007).

The general aim of the project was to motivate the socially marginalized inhabitants in Salacgriva town and surrounding rural areas and Kuldiga town and region, who were subjected to the risk of social exclusion, to join the labor market or to educate themselves and raise their self-esteem and the level of activity, in order to join the labor market later. The direct aims of the project envisaged to work out the motivation programs and during the cycle of 11 days’ seminar to approbate the motivation program in two municipalities of Latvia for parents who return to work after the maternity leave, for the large families and single parents to facilitate the potential of their employability, which would promote their joining the labor market, the increase in their life quality and more successful integration in the society; to prepare the hand-book on developing motivation; to increase the information level of the society about promoting the possibilities for employability and the role of personal initiative in this process.
Four motivation programs had been worked out and approbated within the project, taking into consideration the needs of particular target groups and their recommendations: “Me with myself, me with the others”, “Me in the family”, “Me in the local municipality, the state”, “Me in the labor market”, which encourage to acquire knowledge and to improve skills for purposeful use of the information in order to improve one’s life quality and to facilitate employability, which in future could be used all over in Latvia. 60 representatives of the target group involved in the project acquired skills to seek, to analyze and apply the information for improving the quality of their life; the feeling of being castaway of these people decreased, their self-esteem was raised, their communication skills improved; the individual plans for attaining the set aims were worked out. During the project the Hand-book for implementing the Motivation programs was worked out and published in 500 copies (it includes the descriptions of the approbated lessons and the hand-outs). The project ended with the project evaluation conference in which the motivation programs were presented; among the 50 participants were the representatives of the local municipalities, state institutions and non-governmental sector.
The project was funded by European Structural funds and Latvian state.