Disabled + Self Employed
Start date: Oct 1, 2016,
End date: Mar 31, 2019
PROJECT
FINISHED
The project “Disabled + Self Employed“ (DSE) will provide adult education for people with disabilities and will support them to start, build and develop their own business. The goal is to equip institutions for disabled people and institutions for entrepreneurship to support people with disabilities on their way to occupational independence with a new approach. A recent statistics from Eurostat showed the big difference between the employment situation of people with and people without disabilities. This is above all not only due to the high unemployment rate in European countries in general, but also because employers still have many prejudices against hiring people with disabilities. In order to improve this situation for people with disabilities DSE wants to utilize their different potentials and bring them into the job market by being self-employed.Our project DSE will address this challenge by producing four different intellectual outputs during the project.The first one will be a guidebook including best practices examples of the partner organizations with instructions for transfer and adaptation, plus all results of the following three IOs.As second intellectual output we will develop a barrier-free e-learning tool tailored for the special starting positions of the different types of our indirect target group. For instance, the software and the content for deaf users is created in sign language, for blind users it is screen-reader compatible, and for learning-disabled users it is expressed in easy language.The third intellectual output will be tested and implemented tutorials which will also be targeted for people with special needs. They will provide the disabled with more and better knowledge of support services and deeper business knowledge concerning different subjects such as accounting and finances, distribution and sales, IT and more.The method used in developing the curricula as part of the guide book and the e-learning-software will be involving the future users in the development process right from the beginning since people with disabilities are experts in their own right.Although there are countless networks to exchange information, share learning, give and receive assistance, until now there are no networks that cope with the specific demands of handicapped self-employed people which connect institutions for people with disabilities with start-up initiatives. Therefore we will set up virtual communities in each partner country as our fourth IO, the communication and exchange will be carried out in the respective national language.These communities will be supposed to continue and record future developments and application of DSE even after the expiration of the project and guarantee the requested sustainability.All partners of DSE have experiences in cooperating with disabled persons and in improving their situation of employment and they have established long term collaborations with advocacy groups and societies that support people with disabilities.
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