TG: drug users
Activity: environmentally friendly

Job Tact Recycling

΅Being able to work is an integral part of human existence. Work not only does it secure existence, it is also key to confidence and satisfaction of any individual.”

The organization

Job Tact Recycling is part of Contact Netz Foundation in Bern, Switzerland and was founded in 1995. Since then it has been an integral part of the foundation’s job programmes and social enterprises concept for drug-dependents.

Job Tact is one in a series of different Contact Netz programmes, aiming at offering work opportunities for drug-dependents who are in a programme of substance-based therapy. Job Tact offers work places in social enterprises mainly in the areas of electronic recycling, gardening and construction. In the recycling workshop, electronic equipment and components from entertainment and office industries are professionally disassembled. This is done manually and requires no specialist knowledge and skills. The separated materials may be re-used and re-assembled for other purposes. The gardening and construction firm carries out private and public contracts in the fields of renovation, remodelling, painting, cleaning, moving, etc. in groups of two to eight people. Participants are guided and accompanied by professionals on the construction sites. No specialist knowledge is needed, however the jobs require strong physical condition. In addition, the programme offers part-time jobs in the public sector. Clients who apply for these jobs have to be realistic about their abilities and performance and show self-control with regard to their dependency. They are supported and accompanied by their managers.

The project aims at creating working opportunities. Clients are enabled to quickly find a workplace without facing administrative hurdles. Participants should be enabled to get back and enhance social competencies such as punctuality, endurance, co-operation in a group, self-reliance, etc. They should learn to realistically evaluate their work potential and social competencies. Although jobs are established in a protected work environment, they are adapted to those in the open labour market.

In the long-term, Job Tact aims at re-integrating participants into the open labour market. Realistically, and because of the rather huge social deficits of its participants, this is a far-reaching goal demanding intensive support and co-operation of all supporting staff.

In order to achieve a positive development in their lives, clients of this project need appropriate assistance. This assistance is linked to a two-step model that separates workers into two groups at the time of their job start: employment and low skill level work.

Results

The job offers of Contact Netz provide drug-dependents with a real-world frame of reference mainly through self-generating costs. Hence, the re-integration happens in a cost-effective and fast-paced way. Contact Netz generates more than 50% of its costs through their own economic activity. Job Tact Recycling in particular generates a lower income (subsidy vs. income ratio is about 5:1) and all its income is made through the recycling of computers.

All in all Contact Netz offers and innovative combination of social tasks and entrepreneurship, through 90 jobs tailored to drug-dependents, as well as a daily structure and bridge back to the free labour market for drug-dependents.

More information

Website: www.contactnetz.ch