Baku, September 26, AZERTAC

BP and its co-venturers in the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli, Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, Shah Deniz, and South Caucasus Pipeline - AzACG-SOCAR, AzSD-SOCAR, AzSCP-SOCAR, TPAO, PETRONAS, AzBTC-SOCAR, Chevron, Lukoil, NICO, Equinor, Inpex, ExxonMobil, SGC Upstream, SGC Midstream, Itochu, ONGC, TOTAL, ENI - today launched two new social investment initiatives in support of people with disabilities and children with special needs.

The first project called “Enhancing employability of people with disabilities” is the continuation of a successful initiative completed in 2018 positively impacting employability of around 90 people with disabilities. This new phase of the project is designed to expand the training programme in order to further enhance employment opportunities for the participants.

This year’s programme has a major new element. In addition to general English language, soft skills, computer skills development and psychological support, the new programme will include job specific skills such as tax specialist, accounting/payroll/SAP, cashier, social media manager, call center specialist/tele sales, logistics personnel, HR/administrative personnel, graphic designer (Adobe illustrator, in design, Adobe photoshop), web designer, entrepreneurship skills and arts skills.

The psychological support will be provided through individual and group psychological counselling sessions as in the previous year. The project will also continue successful work with the developed network of employers as it was the case in the pilot phase.

Bakhtiyar Aslanbayli, BP Vice President, Communications, External Affairs, Strategy and Region, said: “We have decided to build on the success of the pilot phase which focused on the development of English language, soft and computer related skills of the project participants. These components played an important role in the development of basic employment skills as well as in social integration of the project participants. As a result, quite a few participants have been successful in finding jobs and widely integrating into the society. We in BP provided internship opportunities to some 10 participants. They spent about three months with BP gaining job experience and practicing the skills they had developed through our programme. We expect the efficiency of the trainings to increase this year through providing new opportunities for learning specific job-related skills.”

Throughout the implementation of the project BP and its co-venturers will work closely with the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of Population and the State Employment Centres. This will be combined with the efforts of business organizations and enterprises who would wish to join the initiative to provide internship and employment opportunities for the participants in the project.

This new one-year initiative will be implemented by the British Council. The total value of the project is more than 580,000 AZN.

The second project is an educational programme in support of children with special needs. The project aims to enhance skills and knowledge of specialists engaged in rehabilitation of such children. This will include 16 rehabilitation training programmes for 60 physiotherapy specialists and family members.

“We believe through these training programmes we will be able to support the Azerbaijan Physiotherapy Association’s plans to set up a centre in Pirallahi followed by other locations providing wider accessibility to rehabilitation specialist services. This centre will provide increased accessibility of its services to up to 300 families in need of education, support and advice, and children in need of rehabilitation services. The project will also enable the Association to widen the accessibility to their resources to provide online support, training videos and printed manuals in order to reinforce the trainings and reach more members of the community”, Mr Aslanbayli added.

The duration of the project is eleven months (August 2019 - July 2020) with the value of more than 90,000 AZN.

The project will be implemented by the Public Union for Support of Physiotherapy Development (PUSPD) known as the Azerbaijan Physiotherapy Association.

The success of BP’s and its co-venturers’ projects in the Caspian region includes creating tangible benefits from these projects for the people of the region. To achieve this, BP and its co-venturers implement major social investment programmes, which include educational projects, building skills and capabilities in local communities, improving access to social infrastructure in communities, supporting local enterprises through provision of access to finance and training, support for cultural legacy and sport, as well as technical assistance to public institutions.

In the first half of 2019, BP and its co-venturers in BP-operated joint ventures spent more than $1.4 million in Azerbaijan alone on social investment projects.

BP (on behalf of the co-venturers in the joint ventures that it operates) will continue their social investment initiatives in support of local capacity-building and enterprise development throughout Azerbaijan to assist the country in strengthening its economy.