Employability and Career Consulting for People with Disability

EU Youth Report 2017 published on 15 September 2018 shows that the economic situation affects young people, increasing the unemployment rate and risk of social exclusion and poverty rate. The youth who work through non-formal education must pursue activities that tackle youth unemployment and social exclusion, thus playing a fundamental role in supporting youth education, and encouraging them to participate in social life. Moreover, half of all respondents (50 %) said that they had personally felt discriminated against or harassed on the grounds of disability towards other people. The project “Employability and Career Consulting for People with Disability” was inspired by trainers and participants that met during a Social Entrepreneurship project in Poland. The mobility was focused on youth with a disability, the social business that support and help them and ways how to foster their inclusion into society also during taking part in the
European project. The topic has been so interesting and discovering for many and they decided to go deeper into the topic of youth with disabilities and lack of equity, especially in terms of access to the labor market. The social enterprise is offering some jobs but most of the people with disabilities felt they are positively discriminated. After the discussion, we came up to the idea to make this project as mainly for youth workers who are directly involved in helping youth people with disabilities in finding a job and better establishment in the labor market. If we take the statistic were more than 7.5 million young people not engaged in employment, education or training – over 13 percent of the EU’s youth population * What Euro fund is also stressing in other places Young people suffering from some kind of disability or health issues are 40% more likely to be NEET than those in good health* That is why we want to propose a project that will equip youth workers working already with young people with disabilities in new skills and methods of activating this vulnerable group into the labor market. The main aim of the project is to use non-formal education to equip youth workers with tools and methods that can be used in tackling long-term unemployment among young people with disabilities.

Some of the needs for organizing such projects are:
1. Youth workers are not active in inventing and applying methods towards people with disability
2. NGOs can also engage and work with people with disabilities. The youth workers in the partner organizations are looking for alternative approaches to help people with disabilities. The way how they are helping people without disability it’s not always the best way to help a person with some disabilities. Lack of knowledge for Erasmus+ and European programs in general especially among the people with disabilities
4. Not having sufficient information regarding the Europe 2020 strategy, and how this strategy is focused on people with special needs.
5. Lack of Information and awareness about programs and tools that can help reduce unemployment of people with disabilities.
6. Not having a forum for dialogue and project opportunities (including funding) among youth in all participating organization’s countries.