WEBSITE:
www.caritasworks.lt
www.vilnius.caritas.lt
FACEBOOK:
www.facebook.com/caritasworks
CONTACT:
Charity Foundation VA Caritas Social Projects was founded in 1996 and since then is working in the capital city Vilnius with the most disadvantaged people through informal education and integration into the labour market developing social entrepreneurship projects as a tool facilitating social inclusion and restoring and/or gaining necessary working skills.
The main activities of the Foundation are:
- Development of social, educational, vocational and ecological initiatives and projects;
- Striving for dignified and integrated life of socially excluded people;
- Establishment and development of different project of social entrepreneurship: café, candle workshop, street paper.
Organization mainly works as Caritas Works which addresses socially excluded and long-term unemployed people (people suffering from addictions, ex-prisoners, homeless and others). It’s a candle workshop that works as a transitional supported employment where people get necessary education and support for gaining necessary working skills, restoring their self-esteem, learning new craft.
The first social business project of the Foundation is social café “Agapė” which works with long-term unemployed women providing social assistance, consulting, motivational services and training oriented to integration into labour market.
The organization works in close partnership with a social business project “Žmogus.dėžė” (“Human.box). The aim of the project is to provide an alternative work opportunity for people facing difficulties finding a job integrating them into the labour market. They publish a magazine which is sold by people participating in the project. Selling a magazine is an opportunity to gain new skills and competences and practice them as well as to earn some money – half of the magazine price goes directly to the vendor. Every vendor participates in a training course.
Foundations works in close cooperation with Vilnius Caritas (regional organization), which is member of FEANTSA (European Federation of Organizations Working with Homeless)