The EU funded project “Supermom Kick-Off 2010” offers vocational orientation and training in media for unemployed single mothers. The training combines vocational training courses and practical work with informal learning. This combination empowers the women, raises their professional as well as personal competences and by this increase their chances at the labour market. In the workshops the women will produce a movie in a mediapedagogical approach as one products of the project.
The single mothers are actors in front and behind the camera. They learn management and marketing, technical aspects as well as social skills. The film will show their daily problems in different parts of Europe. The project offers a networking place where they can reflect the own opportunities and abilities. The women will have the opportunity to get an insight in a new field of work and to demonstrate new skills. The project gives them new perspectives for their professional future and supports them with professional workshops as well as with teamwork, group dynamics and conflict resolution approaches – positive skills that are also needed for the parent-child relationship.The project aims furthermore at the stimulation of a creative debate on the occupation of single parents in Europe.
The media sector is an attractive work place and has a high proportion of women. Even if it is characterised by a high workload, many women with children choose it as there are often project based tasks which can be solved decentral, e.g. in home office, part time or on a self-employed basis.
The 20th Century was characterised by fundamental changes in the family structure. A considerable increase in the proportion of households of single parents is the result. Unemployment among lone parents is for various reasons significantly higher than for parents who live together as a couple. In Europe, as almost everywhere in the world, single parents belong to the population group with the highest risk of poverty and hence they are strongly threatened by social exclusion. Therefore customised solutions are needed.
It is important not only to see the increasing and alarming numbers about unemployment and poverty under single parents and the more or less abstractly formulated problems, but to consider the living situation of single parents in order to really understand them and to find solutions.
The planned project offers a practical approach, in which the abstract group “single parents” becomes personalised which leads to a better understanding of their problems. At the same time it will contribute to a raise of competences and by that to an increase of the chances at the labour market.
