Under the heading, ‘Active, not Passive’, non-profit builders, GrünBau gGmbH ,have managed to turn a slumlord’s building in a notorious part of Dortmund’s into a pleasant residence again.  Local companies, along with twelve people with a long history of joblessness, took part in the project.  This has been the largest project carried out in NRW under the Publicly Funded Employment scheme.

‘With this project, we have combined two equally important objectives’, explains GrünBau‘s managing director, Andreas Koch.  ‘We were always going to both bring about fair employment to jobless people from the area and contribute to the stabilisation of the neighbourhood.’

For this purpose, GrünBau, which is also a training provider, has given regular jobs to people who had been out of work for a long time.  The remediation work on the building is done in close cooperation with locally based specialist firms.
The project has attracted nationwide – and very positive – attention.  The – no longer - shabby building is now an affordable home mainly to young university students and has been awarded with a prestigious social urban development prize.  It has also received a special award from the North Rhine-Westphalia Government for successfully dealing with slumlord property.

Across the state, the Dortmund project is the largest under the Publicly Funded Employment programme and has created 226 jobs for people who had been unemployed for a very long time.

In NRW, the Publicly Funded Employment scheme, co-financed by the ESF is used to create regular jobs.  Along with othe means of support and assistance, this aims to re-integrate vulnerable members of the community into gainful employment.  The state headquarters of the Federal Employment Service is also involved in the funding.