Avondhu Blackwater Partnership Chairman Seán Hegarty has hailed the success of the Avondhu Blackwater Partnership Jobs Clinic, which was launched in Mallow this week. The initiative, which is designed to provide a bottom-up, one-to-one enabling service to job seekers, ran last year and in light of that success has continued into 2012.

Minister of State at the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation and Education and Skills, Seán Sherlock TD launched the event and praised the work Avondhu Blackwater Partnertship have done in upskilling those seeking employment, by providing relevant training and supports. Avondhu Blackwater Partnership CEO Valerie Murphy summed up the spirit of the programme which seeks to upgrade and enhance the skills of participants, allowing them to re-engage with the jobs market.

While not being a bank of jobs itself, what it does offer is a range of supports, mentoring sessions, advice and skill enhancements to better equip those who have been out of work for a considerable length of time and who feel very distant from the labour market.

It also aims to assist those whose area of work/qualification has become obsolete and who wish to re-train in a new area, the recently unemployed, those who wish to re-direct themselves completely to a different area of work and need support to develop a personal action plan, those who wish to be supported in developing business plans, small business ideas and who are self employed or moving towards self-employment and those who need to update their practical job seeking skills, such as interview techniques, CV preparation, job hunting skills.