In Hungary and in the surrounding countries the participation of people with disabilities in the open labour market is still negligible. This situation is more severe in the hospitality sector. It often occurs that young people with different disabilities don’t have those basic social and communication skills being indispensable for holding their own in open labour market and getting the suitable job. The catering industry provides a great place for improving all these skills, moreover it could also play a major role in strengthening the social inclusion because when a person with disability provides service or help for a person without disability, then it means reversing the socially accepted roles. Hence the helper/service provider becomes the helped one/client and the helped one/client becomes the helper/service provider. The first restaurant in Budapest, run by people with disabilities, called the Nem Adom Fel Cafe and Bar was opened in January 2016. The objective of this social enterprise is to give the disabled people the opportunity to work in catering industry and to set a good example by running a sustainable enterprise, that gives an answer to the current major social problems at the same time. The business was absolutely innovative because on the one hand it was opened as the first such place in the capital and on the other hand it operates not only as a restaurant but our primary aim was also to create an integrated and inclusive community space. The place was established by the Nem Adom Fel Foundation, having more than 10 years experience, and it is one of the most innovatively functioning civil society organizations in this sector nowadays. It has about 120 disabled employees and has several social enterprise like projects having run for many years. However, its operation is carried out by the main applicant called “Nem Adjuk Fel” Social Cooperative. Experience from the past years has proved the aforementioned: Improving the situation for young adult employees with disability on the labour market still requires a lot of work. The catering industry provides a great opportunity to strengthen the social inclusion and reduce the discrimination and it also allows the young people with disability to acquire communication and social competencies that can be to their great advantage in other aspects of life and employment. In the past 3 years we gained in the restaurant in Budapest by itself a great amount of experience and knowledge related to the employment of people with different kind of disabilities in catering industry and their preparation for work, let alone the other similar European restaurants. We would like to gather this knowledge to a certain extent, systematize it and share it with others in order to help them launch further similar initiatives and help the employees with disability get the opportunities for employment in this sector. We believe that training the people with disability in this field and using their skills in catering are modern and innovative ideas of which the general public has been completely unaware yet. The experience having been collected by us and our partners can’t be found elsewhere, thus with this consortium an intellectual property could be created and this is considered to be unique in Europe. Within the framework of our strategic partnership we would like to provide opportunity for development for those who have already been working in the catering industry with the help of organizing short-term trainings on the one hand and on the other hand we also would like to gather the experience of the restaurants functioning the same way in the partner countries and to compile a training material helping the young people (between the age of 18 and 30) with disability to be trained for holding their own in catering industry (even in the open labour market). The training material is compiled with the aim of developing the participants’ competencies in various fields and these have been summarized in 5 sections altogether. Compiling the knowledge material is carried out by the partners by making use of common, shared experience being available online for everyone and as a result of this they help people with disability to be employed and be more employable in the open labour market, moreover, to establish other similar social enterprises. Although the training material is primarily based upon the field of catering industry and focuses on it, we still think that it could be made good use of even in other fields because it is aimed at developing such basic key competences being vitally important in the open labour market and in other areas of life as well. The project also includes holding dissemination occasions aimed at motivating other employers and organizations to employ disabled young people themselves too with the help of the training material and to dare launch similar initiatives helphelping young people with disability to improve their labour market situation.
The aim of the project is to share experience between Hungarian, Polish, Slovak and Slovenian partners who run a similar inclusive café to Never Give Up Café & Restaurant. Together, we aimed to create a training material that will prepare young people with disabilities to enter and succeed in the hospitality industry. We considered it particularly important to involve the people concerned in the process, i.e. people with disabilities already working in the hospitality industry, and we would like them to play an advisory and experiential expert role in the process of creating the training material, and also to act as a control group. We believed that their involvement will be empowering themselves as well, as they will be able to participate as equal participants in the process. Our purpose was also to create a space for these places and organizations to change experiences and share all the knowledge they have gained during the past years. We wanted to collect all the knowledge and experience to be able to systemize and share and support the employability, the social inclusion and the quality life of young pepole with disbaility.
The situation of people with disabilities in the open labour market is directly encountered through the everyday work of the Never Give Up Social Cooperative in hospitality. In addition to qualifications, acquiring social skills and practice is a key issue for a young person with a disability to succeed in the labour market. Our experiences shows that hospitality is a field where they can gain most of the basic competences which are necessary to be succesful in life and on the labour market as well and it can be also a good arena for social inclusion. Over the past 3 years, we have accumulated a wealth of experience and knowledge on the employment and preparation of people with disabilities in the hospitality sector, which we would like to systematise and share with others, to help develop similar initiatives and job opportunities for people with disabilities in the sector. We are also aware that there are a number of catering establishments run by people with disabilities in the surrounding countries that have had positive experiences, some of which we have visited or they have visited us in the past. These short visits showed us that we all have a lot of knowledge and experience to share, which gave us the idea of this project.