With the aim of professionalizing 40,000 jobs in the care sector, and transforming aging into a quality employment opportunity to guarantee a dignified life, the Basque Government is developing the ZainLab project.
Launched within the framework of the Employment Strategy 2030ZainLab is oriented to identify opportunities for qualification, employment and care entrepreneurship and of the ‘silver economy’ in collaboration with the administrations and public and private organizations that operate in the sector. To do this, it seeks to prepare the professional profiles necessary for this quality employment and stimulate business initiatives that accompany and face the new challenges of the sector.
ZainLab is a project that tries to contribute to generating a professionalized and quality job market in the area of care for the elderly
The Vicelehendakari and Minister of Labor and Employment, Idoia Mendiapresented the first conclusions of the ZainLab project within the framework of the conference ‘Professionalization and employment in the field of care and in the longevity economy’. In his speech, he stressed the demographic reality that we live in the Basque Country “with half a million people over 65, a third over 80” and that he foresees that in a decade 30% of the population is over 65 years of ageand even triple the number of those over 90, especially women.
This panorama, “is going to require us give our social services system a spin to facilitate personal autonomy. It is about offering resources so that people, especially the elderly, can lead an autonomous life with full guarantees, in short, offering a safety net to all people, whatever their way of life”said the Vicelehendakari
In his opinion of the counselor of, “The response to this situation cannot be the same as always, that of the primary care circle, the family, must be innovate to have trained professionalsso what is presented as a problem, aging, we want it transform into an opportunity for new employment niches who need qualified personnel for that immediate Basque Country”.
In his speech he insisted that it is about “a project of rights, innovation, dialogue and collaboration, quality employment and equality”while claiming that this reality “responds to two great successes of our social system: the guarantee of the right to health without exceptions, which allows us to live longer, and the freedom of peopleespecially women, to decide the children they want to have”.
He finished his speech, recalling that this is a task that the government cannot do alone, so “We have allied ourselves once again with all the institutions, with professionals in different fields and with the Third Sector. A strategic alliance for a triple strategic challenge: care for those who need care, create more than 40,000 quality employment opportunities, and tackle the inequality suffered by women, both the elderly and those who work in the sector”.