„BAN Sozialökonomische BetriebsgmbH“, an enterprise with limited liability is an employment company, whose main goal is the reintegration of former long term unemployed people into the first labour market through temporary employment in a normal market situation.
 
Our philosophy is based on three main pillars.
 

Our social pillar:

 
We offer disadvantaged people an employment contract that is normally limited to one year (the so called transitional job). During that time the workers and employees are accompanied by personnel development staff which give them assistance in kind of training and qualification, vocational orientation, application training and outplacement –the people shall be placed in the open labour market after that year –as well as support in different kinds of problems such as debt consolidation or accommodation issues.
 

Our economic pillar:

 
BAN is selling its products and services on the free market, thus achieving two sub goals: We cover more than 50% of our overall costs by economic turnover and therefore reduce dependence on public funding and for our target group working in a free market situation is the best “training”for the open market.

 
Our economic activities are:
 
Clearing out and transport services
 
Recycling yard
 
A joinery where furniture is repaired and refurbished
 
A department where electric devices are repaired and

A second hand sales department where we sell various items ranging from cheap, used
furniture and mattresses to electric equipment and restaurated furniture or collectors items of all kinds.

Our ecological pillar:

 
Our activities are based on the ecologic cycle “collecting-separating-recycling-reusing”. Through trained waste advisers we are integrated into the municipal waste avoidance and management system, we also run a site for problematic waste. Two thirds of the incoming cargo can be reused or recycled, the rest remains as bulky waste.
 
Our main funding institutions are the public employment service (in cooperation with the ESF), the state of Styria and the City of Graz. BAN is even engaged in different projects sponsored by the EU so as to test new approaches, in our labour market policy as well as in our economic activities.