Improving the Employability of People with Hearing Impairments is a 2-year Strategic partnership project, which aims at providing integrated support, tailored to the needs and specificities of people with hearing impairments, through development and validation of innovative integrated training tools and materials to enhance their employment prospects, empowerment, and social inclusion. The objective of the envisaged project activities will be to support sustainable investment in hearing impaired people’s training, by means of pilot workshops and preparation of trainers, in order to increase motivation and self-awareness, create incentives for acquiring new soft skills, necessary for efficient job search, improve job-finding competences and employment performance and thus promote efficient integration of hearing impaired people into employment. The proHear project proposal is a joint follow-up of a number of transnational projects with the participation of members of the project consortium, the results of which proHear builds upon by substantially adapting them, bringing an innovative element in the training materials elaborated, to the specific needs for employment integration and social inclusion of the project’s target group – people with hearing impairments. The project claims innovativeness in being practically the first EU-wide effort to come up with a transnational initiative, focused on enhancing the employability of hearing impaired individuals in different countries, located in different parts of Europe, facing similar barriers, to both education and social integration, including levels of participation by individuals with hearing loss in the labour market. Furthermore, a first-of-its-kind Interactive e-Learning Platform and a collaborative transnational network of trainers and employment counsellors of persons with hearing impairments will be set up, which will greatly facilitate the exchange of good practices/success stories and training delivery to these individuals. This will further have a multiplier effect on the efforts of the partnership to make a change regarding the situation of hearing impaired people EU wide. The project’s IOs envisage a Survey and Gap Analysis (IO1), to be conducted by means of desk research and interviews with hearing impaired persons and relevant stakeholders, incl. actual/prospective employers of such individuals. High quality, practically-oriented training workshops will be conducted using curriculum and training content elaborated, based on the Gap Analysis’ results (IO2) and a special Empowerment Kit (IO4) for people with hearing impairments. In order to enhance the sustainability and efficiency of the training activities, a trainers’/employment counsellors’ collaborative network will be established and an Interactive e-Learning Platform created (IO3), containing all the developed learning resources and making training content and experience accessible to all stakeholders for adaptation and further use. The proHear target group comprises people with hearing impairments, differentiated by their employment status (inactive/unemployed/employed). Thus, the project is expected to directly benefit, at the different stages of its implementation, min. 80 representatives of the target group, to take part in the pilot training workshops (min. 20 per country), min. 90 overall (together with prospective employers) people with hearing impairments to participate in the envisaged Local Career Days, which will be organised after the piloting phase of the project and IO4. In addition, the partners expect to directly involve no less than 130 relevant stakeholders (indirect beneficiaries) in the project’s multiplier events (4 Local Info Days and a Final Conference). The proHear consortium comprises 6 partners from 4 countries (Poland, Bulgaria, Lithuania, and Iceland), with diverse profiles in the field of hearing impaired people’s support and employment. All partners will be responsible for the implementation of project activities in their own countries and an active involvement in the work on all IOs. Thus, the proHear partnership achieves a good balance and mutual complementarity in terms of experiences/competences possessed and allocation of tasks and responsibilities. The proHear project will have an overall impact on participating organisations, policymakers, social partners, single employers and, finally, people with hearing impairments, as its major objective is to narrow the existing knowledge gap, provide awareness on key concepts and opportunities and equip hearing impaired people with the needed tools to support their efforts for mitigating their own state of “vulnerability” in the labour market and improving the degree of their social inclusion. Thus, the project’s end goal is to put in place a sustainable process of empowerment, self-awareness and self-initiative among the project’s target group, which will continue to evolve after the project's complition
The situation of people with disabilities is high on the EU social inclusion agenda, as through the adoption and implementation of the European Commission's European Disability Strategy 2010-2020, EU promotes the active inclusion and full participation of disabled people in society, in line with the EU human rights approach to disability issues. Regarding labour market participation, it has been reported in the EC Joint Employment Report 2017 (http://ec.europa.eu/social/BlobServlet?docId=17224&langId=en), that “data (EU-SILC 2014) show high activity and employment gaps for people with disabilities” what was no exception for the main target group of the ProHear project. Thus, the main goal of the proHear project, within 26 months Strategic partnership, was to provide integrated support, tailored to the needs and specificities of people with hearing impairments, through development and validation of innovative integrated training tools and materials, in order to increase motivation and self-awareness, create incentives for acquiring new soft skills necessary for efficient job search, improve job-finding competences and employment performance and thus promote efficient integration of hearing impaired people into employment. 1. Identification of the key competence gaps and specific training needs of people with hearing impairments in the partner countries, related to job finding, on-the-job performance and employability in general. 2. Identification of a number of occupations (3-5) in each partner country, in which people with hearing impairments find serious difficulties effectively integrating. 3. Elaboration of an innovative training methodology, tools and materials, combining the processes of counselling, training and job-seeking in a single, integrated approach, in order to enhance the employability and social inclusion of hearing impaired people. 4. Transfer the project effects to other countries through the set-up of an Interactive e-Learning Platform and establishment of a network for trainers and employment counsellors of people with hearing impairments. The proHear consortium comprised 6 partners from 4 countries (Poland, Bulgaria, Lithuania, and Iceland), with diverse profiles in the field of hearing impaired people’s support and employment (i.e. universities, union of deaf people, education’s association and rehabilitation centre). Thus, the proHear partnership achieved a good balance and mutual complementarity in terms of experiences/competences possessed and allocation of tasks and responsibilities. The proHear main target group were people with hearing impairments, differentiated by their employment status (inactive/unemployed/employed) as well as relevant stakeholders, incl. actual/prospective employers and trainers/employment counsellors. As part of the project a Survey and Gap Analysis (IO1), were carried out by means of desk research and interviews with hearing impaired persons and relevant stakeholders, incl. actual/prospective employers of such individuals. Based on the above high quality, practically-oriented training workshops were conducted using curriculum and training content, as well as training guide for counsellors, elaborated within (IO2) and a special Empowerment Kit (IO4) for people with hearing impairments was created. In order to enhance the sustainability and efficiency of the training activities, a trainers’/employment counsellors’ collaborative network was established and an Interactive e-Learning Platform created (IO3), containing all the developed learning resources and making training content and experience accessible to all stakeholders for adaptation and further use. The proHear project had an overall impact on participating organisations, policymakers, social partners, single employers and, finally, people with hearing impairments, as its major objective was to narrow the existing knowledge gap, provide awareness on key concepts and opportunities and equip hearing impaired people with the needed tools to support their efforts for mitigating their own state of “vulnerability” in the labour market and improving the degree of their social inclusion. Moreover, put in place a sustainable process of empowerment, self-awareness and self-initiative among the project’s target group will continue to evolve after the project's completion by using the http://prohear-platform.eu/ and the project results will further be available at project www.prohear.eu website beyond the project end. Dissemination included mentoring approach, valorisation (pilot) workshops with practitioners and hearing impaired people as well as 12 different Local Info, Career and Labour market days with relevant stakeholders (indirect beneficiaries) in each country including international valorisation conference in PL and EU dissemination through partner networks.