Job Factory: Providing Jobs for Unemployed Youth

Job Factory provides job training to unemployed teenagers and young people in Basel, Switzerland and helps them find work, giving them hope and a second chance. No matter why the youths are jobless, so they do not begin their career on welfare, Job Factory offers six-month internships to approximately 300 young adults each year, in such areas as cooking and restaurant management, administration, housekeeping, printing, information technology, manufacturing, hairdressing, handicrafts and recycling. Job Factory also provides coaching through its Job Training Foundation, helping the youth recognize their talents and develop their capabilities while tackling their weaknesses and deficiencies.

Since Job Factory was established by Robert Roth in 2000, over 2,000 youths have taken part in Job Factory's training program. To date, 80% of Job Factory's trainees have successfully completed their internships and gone on to find an apprenticeship or job, or have gone back to school.

Job Factory is in fact Robert Roth's second endeavor to provide employment to young people in Switzerland. In 1976 he created Weizenkorn, a business that employs youths with psychological problems. That experience taught him that not just young people with psychological problems or physical disabilities were having trouble finding jobs. Others were also losing hope, so he founded Job Factory. Meanwhile, Weizenkorn has become the largest employer of people with psychological disorders in Switzerland.

Advancing Economic Objectives while Demonstrating True Social Responsibility

Pierre Duponchel and his organization, Le Relais, founded in 1984, collect, sort and recycle second-hand textiles and paper. Doing so, the business has created 1,500 jobs in France and Africa for people who have been excluded from society. At the same time, Le Relais has become a major industry, recycling more than 85% of the 60,000 tons of textiles collected every year.