VIEWS International in cooperation with five partner organizations from Germany (2 promoters), Italy (2 promoters) and France (1 promoter) want to establish a 16 months strategic partnership, from 1/09/2015 till 1/01/2017, which aims developing: - a strong partnership between the partners of the project - attracting more institutions that could hire or offer internships for young visually impaired young persons - sesitazation and awareness raising sessions for public job related institutions which will help these services to get a better understanding of the living condition vision impairment. We aim at improving the employment environment of vision impaired persons, by decreasing attitudinal barriers, imparting of important knowledge and raising awareness for their strengths and needs. This project will involve in the same time institutions with different profiles, all working for the integration of visually impaired persons, and young visually impaired persons (mainly unemployed). We estimate the number of the persons involved in this project at 1000. This project will include 3 transnational meetings, 4 long term mobility projects , 4 multiplier events (1per country) and 40 awareness national sessions (10/country). The intelectual outputs will be an awareness brochure and a policy paper which will be disseminated among diffrent European and national stakeholders. The methodology used will mix several types of non-formal means: brainstorming, working in small groups, debates, peer to peer learning, public debates, training & info sessions etc. We expect that with this project we will build a strong partnership, where more institutions will join this partnership and that all together we can build the second part of the strategic partnership (2017-2019), where more young visually impaired will be involved and more emploeyers will be aware about the benefits of hiring a visually impaired person in their working environment. The impact can be measured by how many future employers will join our project and how many young visually impaired persons will find a job after participating at this strategic partnership project. This strategic partnership will improve the interaction between different employement institutions, employers and visually impaired beneficiaries.
Even though they have undergone a vocational training or obtained a degree at university, in Europe 70 % of the viually impaired adults are unemployed. The idea behind the implementation of this strategic partnership was to foster the importance of this issue, to search and motivate employers to emploi visually impaired persons. VIEWS International in cooperation with five partner organizations from Germany (two promoters: "DBSV"-German Federation of the Blind & Partially Sighted/Central office from Berlin and "LWL" - a vocational training center for blind and partially sighted from Soest), Italy (two promoters: "Soc. Coop. Aforisma" - vocational training center and job support center for impaired persons from Pisa and "Istittuto Rittmeyer", a integration center for visually impaired center from Trieste ) and France (one promoter: "GIAA" - a blind association developping projects around social and professional integration for visually impaired in Paris area) established a 19 months strategic partnership, from 1/10/2015 till 30/04/2017. "VIP awareness raising against unemployment" gathered institutions with different profiles (ngoes, public bodies), all working for the integration of visually impaired persons, mainly unemployed young visually impaired persons. The estimated number of the persons involved in this project is around 500. Due to lack of operational capacity, the French partner, GIAA, retired from the implementation of this project on 31/08/2016, after 11 months of collaboration. The overall aims were to: - develop a strong partnership between the partners of the project; - attract more institutions that could hire or offer internships for young visually impaired young persons and sensitize and aware them in order to get a better understanding of the living condition vision impairment; with the purpose of improving the employment environment of vision impaired persons, by decreasing attitudinal barriers, imparting of important knowledge and raising awareness for their strengths and needs, as well as for the specific support given by each state both to employers and employees. This strategic partnership included: 3 transnational meetings (the first one in Liège, Belgium, the second in Trieste, Italy and the last one in Berlin, Germany), 3 long term mobility projects (of 3 months each: in Liège, Pisa and Trieste) , 4 multiplier events (1per country) and 20 awareness national sessions (5/country). The consortuim equally created an awareness brochure and a policy paper as intelectual outputs; these products were disseminated among diffrent European and national stakeholders. As main result, this project achieved building a strong partnership, where more institutions supported our partnership and activity development. On an individual basis, the three youth mobility projects were very useful for the 3 visually impaired workers on a personal level (aquiring new skills) and on a social development (first time working experience). The awareness raising session, had a great impact on the participants and helped future employers be more open to hiring visually impaired persons. In the future, the Italian and Belgian partners would like to continue their work on professional integration of visually impaired young persons through a new strategic partnership project. As for the long-term benefits, we observed that this strategic partnership improved the interaction between different employement institutions, employers and visually impaired beneficiaries; especially the self esteem and empowerment of the young visually impaired persons that took part in this project.