GLOBAL FAIRNESS INITIATIVE

The Retail Opportunity Training Initiative (ROTI) is designed to bridge the opportunity gap between India’s underemployed women and the country’s fastest growing economic sector. Bridging this gap between available jobs and the fundamental hard and soft skills necessary to secure them is an essential step in addressing the challenge of the underemployment of women and to building the confident, well-prepared workforce necessary to maximize the success of India’s growth sectors. ROTI is supporting the professional growth and economic empowerment of 36,000 women by delivering certificate level training in retail sales designed to prepare graduates for market-facing job opportunities, and build a foundation of key life and livelihood skills.

Better Brick Nepal (BBN) is a new three-year program which seeks to complement and expand upon existing initiatives to remove forced labor from Nepalese brick manufacturing as well as address broader environmental and labor issues inherent in the industry. The goal of this Brick Clean Initiative is to create sustainable and effective policies and structures that incentivize the socially and environmentally responsible production of quality bricks in Nepal and catalyze markets to support the entrenchment of “Better Bricks”. To this effort GFI brings a model of engagement and program implementation that builds strong links with government agencies, relevant private and multilateral organizations and key local stakeholders around productive solutions for the promotion of social and economic protection of marginalized or abused workers.

GFI in partnership with the Brick Clean Network has developed the Bridge Schools project in Nepal to provide access to a quality education for over 400 children of Brick Kiln Workers engaged in GFI’s Better Brick Nepal (BBN) Initiative.

The Creating Your Future / Creando Tu Futuro – Workplace Skills Program is an innovative job skills training program aimed at building a strong foundation of technical and life skills knowledge for low income youth in Latin America. Launching in Argentina and Colombia, with a smaller pilot program in the Dominican Republic, the program will develop and deliver a blended platform of online learning modules and classroom instruction to 2200 low­-income youth with the goal of preparing graduates for secure, financially sustainable jobs in the organized sector.

To address the challenges and opportunities for the recycling in Peru, GFI and the Peru-based "Ciudad Saludable", lead by grassroots leader Albina Ruiz, have partnered to create a leadership development initiative to help target a significant leadership gap in grassroots level of the sector. Based on the 25 years of work experience, "Ciudad Saludable" and GFI will launch a business development module and leadership academy to help recyclers in Peru advance successful pilot interventions that, "Ciudad Saludable" has undertaken in Peru overt the past 5 years.

The Tunisia Inclusive Labor Initiative (TILI) is a partnership between GFI, Partners for Democratic Change and the Tunisian Association for Management and Social Stability (TAMSS), a local Tunisian civil society organization. The goal of the TILI program is to catalyze opportunities and policies to create greater inclusion of Tunisia’s informal sector into the formal economy. The TILI program is working with government and civil society to increase Tunisia’s capacity to create policies that promote formalization, and to educate informal workers on core livelihood benefits accompanying formal participation in the economy. The program supports public institutions in better measuring and engaging the informal sector, it helps develop the capacity of informal workers to register and participate in government and provides support for the establishment of mechanisms that facilitate the extension of social protections.