Enhancing Disabled-people Greatness and their Employability

Project summary

The unemployment rate of people in the European Union who have Intellectual and relational Disabilities is more than twice as high as for the general population. Despite employment legislative reforms, non-discrimination legislation, employer financial incentives through grants and fiscal measures, the employment rate of people with ID ere still low in most of the EU countries. EDGE is aimed at ideating and testing innovative approaches to foster the employability of young people with intellectual and relational disability, creating the ground for their inclusion in the labour market and in the society. There are three type of actors involved in the issue: young people with ID, the employers and the society. The question is: how we can create a win-win solution? EDGE has three primary strategies: 1. Supply-side approaches, focused on preparing the target for employment and then facilitating their placement; 2. Demand-side approaches, focused on creating a desire in employers to hire them; 3. “Third way” approaches, focused on promoting self-employment paths. EDGE is so aimed at improving the well-being and quality of life of young people with mental and relational disabilities, pursuing the following 3 main objectives: • Creating innovative and ad hoc training methodologies for a successful job placement; • Prompting companies to be more proactive about hiring people with mental challenges; • Fostering entrepreneurial mindset, competences and possibilities. At cutting edge of methodology and innovation, our project wants to enhance and make available the inner greatness of young people with intellectual and relational disabilities, it wants to empower their left-behind edge, it wants to allow companies to understand that disability could represent a real edge for them. The project approach is innovative for the following main reasons: 1. A complete process will be designed in order to foster a tailored employability of the target group, including both directions: corporate and self-employment; 2. Innovative digital tools and methodologies will be used to support the participants during the training process (including mindfulness approach); 3. Companies and HR managers will be actively involved and supported through actions aimed at creating inclusive working environments. The biggest impact we expect on EDGE completion lies in the creation of positive conditions, in the involved territories, that will allow young people with ID to easily and happier enter the labour market. This relates to two main project results: 1. Youth with ID are more prepared to join the labour market, as employees or as self-employers; 2. Companies are more willing and prepared to include youth with ID in the workplace. These positive conditions are concretely related to the creation of a set of innovative products dealing with the specific steps/parts of the EDGE process and people involved, and necessary to its completion. So, in term of results, we expect that: 1. EDGE special trainers are prepared in order to support the target group in the development of soft and communicational skills necessaries to reinforce their behavioural background for an easier and happier access into the labour market; 2. A complete and innovative work-based training programme is created, ready to be used by coaches and in-company facilitators to accompany the target group in the acquisition of tailored technical skills and competences. It includes Inclusive Job Design procedures in order to allow the creation of job positions as joint expression of company needs and employees expectations; 3. The public and private companies are prepared to create and implement inclusive work environments and inclusive teams, also through the use of smart-working tools and diversity management strategies. A new brand is developed and spread among those companies that will fill all the inclusive steps becoming more proactive about hiring young people with mental challenges; 4. The target group of youth with ID are well prepared to gradually access the job place, they know how the work environment works, they are used to stay in a work place and they feel comfortable. They possess useful skills such as troubleshooting, decision-making, and problem solving; 5. A group of skilled Business Mentors are prepared to spread among the target group entrepreneurial competences and mind-set, as well as support them in developing their own business, including how to make a present the business plan, and then how to start and develop new businesses; 6. A business planning guide is designed and accessible for young potential entrepreneurs with ID, to support them in creating their own work / business; 7. Young potential entrepreneurs, their families, the staff of cooperatives working with disability, the project Mentors, are able to access crowdfunding platforms and organize crowdfunding campaign to support the start of small businesses, self-employment positions, new entrepreneuri