Root & Branch is a Swiss non-profit organisation and a certified training company, employment agency and recruitment agency in the primary labour market. We are committed to the needs-oriented professional and social integration of the long-term unemployed, especially refugees and late-arrivals, whether in Switzerland or in their country of origin.
With the approach of inclusion, we share successes and failures at eye level and thus promote learning processes across borders and barriers. Root & Branch supports the idea that return assistance must start as a process of reintegration in Switzerland as well, right from the beginning.
The five key pillars of our programmes are:
Follow-up solution
Joint development of a long-term follow-up solution in the primary labour market - in Switzerland, in the country of origin or in a safe third country.
Three learning sites
Formal or non-formal education with simultaneous employment in the primary labour market or paid employment as part of vocational inclusion training. Participation in school lessons and inter-company courses (ÜK), as well as work in a specialist group modelled on Switzerland's dual apprenticeship-based vocational education system with its three venues of learning: training company (apprenticeship), vocational school and industry (inter-company courses).
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To realise our vision, Root & Branch relies on transcultural vocational trainers who have had to overcome borders and barriers in their own lives.
​Individual schedules
Flexibility and targeted learning through the creation of individual training plans. Consideration of individual life and learning circumstances for a sustainable implementation of the agreed goals.
Transcultural vocational training
Professional support by our interdisciplinary team with an outreach character, which challenges and promotes the existing potentials through needs-oriented and process-accompanying vocational training at the three learning locations.
Inclusion network
All our programmes and offers take place on-the-job. This means that the participants are guided, trained and coached in various specialist groups of Root & Branch in terms of social competences (soft skills) and professional competences (hard skills).
Root & Branch places participants in a continuing employment relationship in one of the many partner companies in the primary labour market after completion of the specialist group training. Our vocational trainers support both participants and companies in administrative and labour law matters and migration-specific questions.
Root & Branch is committed to the sustainable vocational integration of the long-term unemployed through additional innovative measures within the inclusion network.
Wahidullah Akbari
"Four years ago, when I first came to Switzerland from Afghanistan, I just sat at home and was bored. Today I have a job again that I like. In the solar industry, I learn something new every day. Recently, I was able to have my professional experience in TIG and MIG welding validated in Switzerland, I am very grateful for that.”