We want to encourage more hearing impaired and deaf trainees to do an internship abroad. Mobility projects for trainees in the dual German system of vocational training are instruments of individual support (basic pedagogical principle of all schools in NRW). Of course, people with disabilities should also have the opportunity to develop their potential and chances to the full. We want to make a contribution to this. We have initially limited ourselves to countries with English as the lingua franca, to countries where we have found partners experienced in dealing with hearing impairments and deafness. Our partners must know communication rules with hearing impaired people and at best, like the Swedish partner, also be sign competent (Swedish signs). For the deaf and hearing-impaired, communication with hearing people is extremely exhausting (permanently watching movements of the mouth and exploring facial expressions). On the part of the hearing person it requires a lot of understanding and consideration (giving more time for tasks, explaining several times if it was not understood, etc.). We wanted to provide this basis for our trainees and therefore chose the partners accordingly.
RWB Essen is a special vocational college with a focus on hearing and communication. It is in fact the only vocational college in Germany that provides upper secondary special needs education for young people with hearing impairments. In addition to various full-time courses (training preparation, upper secondary vocational courses, grammar school with a vocational focus), the RWB offers vocational training in more than 70 occupations. So far there have been some Comenius projects at RWB; vocational trainees could do an internship abroad in cooperation with Robert-Schmidt-Berufskolleg in Essen (Erasmus project). In the above-mentioned projects, we noticed that the hearing-impaired participants came back with an above-average increase in experience and growth in terms of independence and self-confidence. This has motivated us to give more trainees the opportunity of a workplacement abroad, hence the 2019 application.