Advice and guidance is also provided throughout the course's one year duration. This is followed by an eight month course in a more specialised area of the trainees' own choosing, such as welding, joining, and sheetmetal processing. Finally, a specialised practical training programme is offered, complete with work-experience days in local companies. The course is targeted at unemployed people with disabilities, special-needs school leavers, people with psychological problems, and recovering addicts. Average annual attendance is in the order of twenty people, though this year, the number of trainees has risen to twenty-nine.
Participants give a uniformly positive account of their experiences.
Fellow trainee Rene Wuggenig is similarly enthusiastic. I am now determined to succeed on this course and become a mechanic or a fitter. Both trainees cited the help that is provided in finding a job after completion of the course as one of the project's main benefits. Although the project has received financial support from the ESF since Austria's accession to the EU in 1995, as much as ECU 108,460 per year can be earned by the participants themselves through the sale of the turned and milled parts produced by the trainees.