Print version Recommend this page Press release
15/ 2004
Bonn, 29.04.2004
STARegio - Boosting companies' willingness to provide in-house vocational training:
- 20 projects launched
- New funding round beginning
Germany's Federal Ministry of Education and Research launched the STARegio Programme (German acronym for "improving vocational training structures in selected regions") in April 2003 to improve the training place situation through the use of measures that strengthen and improve existing structures. The Federal Institute for Vocational Training ("BIBB") was placed in charge of conducting the programme. The Ministry currently allocates €25 million - which has been co-financed with funds from the European Social Fund - to fund projects and measures aimed at increasing the number of training places on offer by improving regional structures on a lasting basis.
"I am certain that this €25 million will pay off - it is a long-term, effective investment in the future!" With these words, Professor Helmut Pütz, Secretary General of the Federal Institute for Vocational Training opened the kick-off ceremony for the STARegio projects being conducted during the first funding round. Professor Pütz also announced during the ceremony at the BIBB offices in Bonn on April 29, 2004 that the second funding round had opened on April 15, 2004 with the publication of the Funding Guidelines in the Federal Gazette.
Funding provided for the STARegio Programme gives priority to Germany's western states because the training place situation in that part of the country has deteriorated disproportionately more than in the eastern half of the country. Funding gives centre stage to those regions that have an insufficient number of training places on offer but at the same time have identifiable potential for economic development. This support targets projects and campaigns aimed at organizing and coordinating new training networks and expanding existing networks, and at organizing and coordinating "training coaching" (targeted advisory services and support for training campaigns involving specific topics and issues). It also targets projects and campaigns that focus on the use of external training management activities for advising companies involved in in-house vocational training.
BIBB was placed in charge of conducting the STARegio Programme. Working together with the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, it selected 20 projects from the 89 proposals that had been submitted by November 2003. These 20 projects have since taken up their work.
The geographic distribution of these projects (by state):
- Bavaria: 2 projects
- Bremen: 1 project
- Hamburg: 1 project
- Hesse: 4 projects
- Lower Saxony: 2 projects
- North Rhine-Westphalia: 7 projects
- Rhineland-Palatinate: 1 project
- Schleswig-Holstein: 1 project
- Saarland: 1 project
Examples of the projects receiving funds:·
- The LEA! (German acronym for "logistics expands training") project being conducted by the Spedition und Logistik Niederrhein transport and logistics association of the Lower Rhine area aims to use its intensive contact with its members in the Lower Rhine region to encourage transport enterprises - particularly those small and medium-sized transport enterprises which would like to offer in-house training but frequently do not consider themselves to be in a position to do so or which shy away from the administrative work involved - to offer in-house vocational training. With this objective in mind, LEA! has planned, among other things, the creation of a "vocational training association for the logistics sector" that will offer members of the Spedition und Logistik Niederrhein association tailor-made support and ease the load on companies providing the training by taking over some of the organizational tasks involved.
- The Gewerbe- und Innovationszentrum Lippe-Detmold GmbH (abbreviated as Gilde GmbH = "Industry and Innovation Centre of Lippe-Detmold"). Working together with technology centres in the region, Gilde GmbH wants to put existing potential for regional development to use to promote sustainable structural change and thus increase the number of training places on offer in, for example, the health care field. For this project, a collaborative concept that was modelled after public-private partnerships and which Gilde GmbH has tested together with the City of Detmold is to be applied to other collaborative models in the region. The aim of this project is to network all relevant partners in the region and bring them together in a Regional Initial and Continuing Vocational Training Management System for Eastern Westphalia-Lippe.
- The Gesellschaft für Projektierungs- und Dienstleistungsmanagement (abbreviated as gpdm = "Society for Planning and Service Management"). gpdm has set up numerous training networks in Hesse, Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia in the years since 1998. As part of STARegio, gpdm is working in the Federal Employment Agency's Göttingen, Kassel and Korbach districts in Hesse to:
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- Create new training places in (new) branches that have provided little in-house training to date and in companies with strong growth potential,
- Motivate craft enterprises that have stopped providing in-house training to get involved again,
- Establish a non-profit training association in the metal-processing and metal-working sector that will offer small and medium-sized enterprises opportunities for providing training within the framework of a training alliance,
- Contact companies, institutes and publicly-funded institutions in the field of environmental technology with the aim of ascertaining and fostering their potential for providing in-house vocational training.
These three projects provide examples of the 20 campaigns and measures which were launched during the first funding round of this new training place programme. BIBB is now taking applications for other regional training campaigns under the second funding round. Deadline for submissions is May 21, 2004. Up to 15 new STARegio projects will then also be able to make the programme's motto the common goal of their work, namely:
Provide vocational training now - Everyone needs success!
