The main aim of this project was exchange of best practices and knowledge on workplace inclusion between mentors working with women with disabilities from partner countries. The European continent is aging. The average age of Europeans is about 40 years of age. Changes in the age structure of Europe increases the number of people with disabilities. Workplace inclusion thru mentoring was learning partnership between employees for the exchange of technical information, knowledge and skills about a specific profession or a particular job position. With the introduction of a mentoring programme, companies can guarantee that their employees can work fully with their knowledge and position. By learning in the workplace we mean to train persons with disability in all the skills needed to develop and fulfil their tasks at the workplace. The trained skills are within these five areas: Intrapersonal, Interpersonal, Task Development, Environment and Management. With this project we intend to upgrade the skills and competences of mentors in order to enhance workplace inclusion of women with disabilities. The project has benefited the following main target groups: 1. mentors working with women with disabilities in companies; 2. employers, organizations of employers; 3. disabled women working and looking for work; 4. Organizations training women with disabilities and their trainers, career counsellors, coaches, educators) 5. Others: associations of women with disabilities, organizations training trainers, disabled entrepreneus, entrepreneurs’ associations, decision makers. MAIN RESULTS OF THE PROJECT WORK INCLUSION: 1. Blog of the project ; 2. Compendium of Best Practices in work-based training and mentoring gathered in all partner countries; 3. Guide for mentors working with women with disabilities on their successful work integration; 4. face to face training in Gijon, ES for mentors working with women with disabilities 5. Facebook page of the project in EN and all partners languages.

"""VIP and new technologies: easy access to job market"" - YOUTH & innovation strategic partnership project about supporting youth unemployed young visually impaired persons (following called VIP) to prepare and look for a job. The project consortium was formed out of four organisations: Views International (Belgium) as coordinator, Fondación Docete Omnes (Spain), Soc. Cooperativa Aforisma (Pisa) and Istituto Rittmeyer (Trieste) from Italy as project partners. During 24 months (1/02/2018 - 31/01/2020), we organised four transnational meetings, two short-term joint staff events, two national multiplier events (Florence - Italy and Granada- Spain) and one final international multiplier event (Brussels-Belgium). Over the course of the project, two intellectual outputs saw the light: a browser App and an online training platform, which connect young visually impaired persons with companies and various job providers. The direct number of young people that took part in the project were around 4 hundred and the results of the project reached around 600 other European young visually impaired persons. The methodology used was a mix of several types of non-formal means: brainstorming, working in small groups, debates, peer to peer learning, public debates, mock job interview workshops, training & info sessions etc. This strategic partnership is the result of a previous project undertaken from 2015 until 2017 (2015-2-BE04-KA205-001686); which tackled the theme of unemployment of youth, who is visually impaired. While implementing the previous project we got aware of the fact that the low rate of unemployment of visually impaired persons in Europe is not due to lack of dissemination of information about capabilities of visually impaired persons or because employers were quite often unaware of the support that they can get when hiring a person with special needs, but also because a large part of young visually impaired persons does not have a clear knowledge about using online tools in looking for a job. This seems to be caused by lack of self-confidence due to low self-esteem and reduced soft skills (how to dress for a job interview, how to present oneself, how to overcome ""barrier of visual contact"" with the others, etc.) The main objectives we set for this project were:1) to equip young visually impaired persons (18-35 years old) with soft skills via an on-line platform training courses useful to be successful for a job interview;2) to empower young visually impaired persons in using on-line tools in order to look for a job by using a new app that will be developed during this project;3) to increase the confidence of young visually impaired people in their capacities in accessing new professions (not only phone operator/massage therapist/ticket seller for the national lottery as it is mostly the case in the three countries represented in this project);4) to reach an awareness of public agencies, unemployment offices, employers that it is possible and highly desirable to make our society more inclusive and supportive with young persons with visual impairment by using new adapted technologies.The main results of this project are:- IO1 is a web app adapted to all devices. It allows users to search for job offers as well as to publish them. It is fully compatible with screen readers for both computers and mobile devices. - IO2 is a platform designed to train skills useful in the job search. It is available in 4 languages: English, French, Italian and Spanish (and currently being translated to Polish, Romanian, Bulgarian and Flemish)Both tools are fully accessible to blind and visually impaired people.This strategic partnership improved the interaction between different employment institutions, employers and visually impaired beneficiaries. It empowered young VIP skills (use of online tools). The long term benefits translate into accessible materials (web app & online training platform) for young VIP's around Europe and in this way, they became more confident and successful in looking for a job."

"Statistics show that more than 70% of the visually impaired population in Europe is currently unemployed; the percentage is even higher for young VIPs. It has been reported that despite achieving a higher level of education, this specific group of young people does not manage to access employment. The majority of young VIPs, however, have unlimited access to the internet and digital tools. This is the reason why we have designed the actions of our previous project (VIP-Tech-Job) around the development of innovative digital solutions to facilitate access to employment for young VIPs. During the ""Vip-Tech-Job: Time 2 Act !"" project, the consortium (partners from Belgium, Greece, Italy and Spain) plans to intensify the dissemination efforts of already realized products on multiple levels and to create additional complementary outputs that will simplify the existing products and render them as user-friendly as possible.The general, long-term objective of the project is to increase the number of young employed VIPs all over Europe and to promote their active citizenship, together with the development of key competencies in lifelong learning. The specific objectives are:- to empower young VIPs and better prepare them in their quest to find a job and be active citizens;- to improve access to information regarding the employment of young VIPs, both for young VIPs and employers/supported employment specialists, etc.;- to facilitate the connection between young VIPs looking for a job and employers/HR managers (including via job agencies and portals).With the use of nonformal and experiential learning, internal and external desk research, we are going to produce 3 innovative outputs, a learning and teaching activity and 4 local focus groups, involving over 400 people among our target groups. The products are:1) the “VIP Job Accessibility Toolbox”, a one-stop-shop for all our users belonging to different target groups: it will include tools and resources to support employers who wish to understand concepts like accessibility and inclusion in the workplace, job agencies, youth workers, youth leaders, supported employment specialists and career and school counsellors working with young VIPs, and young VIPs themselves, who will be able to connect and exchange experiences with their peers and, undoubtedly, ease their access to the job market and as a result, increase their levels of social inclusion. 2) the ""VIP Job Podcast"", a podcast comprised of 10 episodes in partner languages, which will be recorded by skilled young VIPs and explore success stories of young VIP's inclusion in different workplaces in Europe through interviews and storytelling. The podcast will also include a narrated version of user guides for our digital products - how to use them, what you can get out of them, how will they help you in your job quest, etc.3) the ""VIP Job Video Pack"": the narrative of this IO will tend to depict the hurdles of young VIP in integrating the job market as well as their idealistic views on a 100% barrier-free work environment. The LTTA in Granada (Spain) is a blended mobility for young people; it's designed on the model of traditional job fairs and will compromise an in-person meeting and online preparation and follow-up/testing phase for all participants involved; through experiential learning, they will have the possibility to practically test what they have learnt by confronting themselves with employers via simulated individual and group interviews. The targets groups of the project's results and activities are: - young visually impaired job seekers, either visually impaired students transitioning from education to work or young unemployed VIPs; - - employers (private and public sector) and HR managers + professionals supporting young VIPs, including youth workers, youth leaders, supported employment specialists, school and career counsellors, etc-;The direct beneficiaries of the project will be at least 400 and we expect to reach at least 600 other young VIPs all over Europe for each result. VTJ2 will last 24 months (1/02/2021-31/01/2023), and will also include 4 transnational meetings, one international multiplier event (organised by the project coordinator), and three local multiplier events organised by each partner organisation.At the local, national and European level, through the targeted dissemination planned by the partnership, we also strive to raise the general public’s awareness level and inspire organizations, institutions, networks that work with young VIPs to advocate for improving the conditions, support services and work environments for young VIPs all over the EU and beyond.The project’s impact will be reflected upon young VIPs who will improve their soft skills to be able to successfully find a job using the products created by the partnership. The digital component of the project makes it extremely easy to re-shape and adapt, given the current health emergency in Europe."

Student Centred Adult Learning Engagement in Higher Education (SCALE) is a project aimed at supporting lecturers delivering degree level courses in universities, colleges and other educational providers. Following research identifying the learning needs of students in secondary education, this project explores how lecturers are supported and equipped to meet students' needs when they progress into Higher Education. This project will explore needs that lectures identify, and also their examples of best practice. It will respond to the needs, and collate the best practice, adding to this to create a toolkit to facilitate high quality learning support for students working at degree-level. The resulting toolkit will be made freely available online in the partner languages of English, Italian, Polish and Spanish. Staff development will be provided for lecturers through an e-course that will be piloted, refined and published as part of the SCALE project. The result will be the upskilling of at least 80 lecturers during the development of the project, with a tried and tested high quality resources established to support many more following the launch of the toolkit.

The project’s idea came from analysis of the situation in the area of employment and particularly employment of people with disabilities. According to OECD, in 2014 there were about 4 million jobs needed to return to pre-crisis employment levels and persons with disabilities, among other groups, were facing particularly high risks of being marginalized in the labor market. At the EU level, about 47% of persons with disabilities were employed compared to 72% of persons without disabilities. There was a need of response, and one of the under-explored areas was action for entrepreneurship and for self-employment among disadvantaged groups. In view of this situation, the main objective of the project was to promote inclusive entrepreneurship for People with physical disability (PWD) by developing a methodology based on job shadowing, mentoring and coaching of PWD willing to become entrepreneurs or free lancers by entrepreneurs and free lancers. The partnership consisted of 5 organisations being a mixture of entities having two main kind of expertise needed for this project: experience in education and support to entrepreneurship and support to labor insertion of people with disabilities. CWEP and BDC are partners specialized in training on entrepreneurship and support to startups, BDC, Aforisma, FDO and ADPI are experienced in labor insertion of people with disabilities. Each member in the consortium organizes VET courses and in addition, CWEP has experience in project management and IT expertise sufficient for development of online versions of the intellectual outputs. Moreover, except for CWEP, all other partners already cooperated in project ESES Designing the Competence Profile of the European Supported Employment Specialist 526851-LLP-2012-IT-LEONARDO-LMP.The main undertaken activities in the project included work on the main results, meaning that the activities included elaboration of two guides and their on-line versions which were then extensively tested and improved during complex piloting activities (consisting of trainings, job shadowing, mentoring and coaching – all described later in the report). Important activities concerned also LTTA, which included recruitment and training of trainers and PWD in Pisa. Another important part of activities included quality assurance and dissemination of the outcomes in order to assure their exploitation also in other EU countries and other fields. The dissemination included large number of Multiplier Events organised in each country. The results of the project include tangible results which are four main intellectual outputs: Guide How to coach people with disability for developing inclusive entrepreneurship, e-course How to mentor people with disability for developing inclusive entrepreneurship, Inclusive Entrepreneurship Manual. Guide for not able bodied on developing your own business or consultancy and e-course for not able bodied on developing your own business or consultancy, as well as many dissemination materials (website, social channels, leaflets, newsletters, posters, presentations, articles) and working materials including plans and very important intangible results. Those are: improved key competencies of target groups, particularly strengthened development of key competence sense of initiative and entrepreneurship, enhanced access to VET of PWD by providing an efficient guidance service through intellectual outputs, better understanding of work based learning, inclusive training and social inclusion concepts, better educational offer of organisations offering training as well as new networks of cooperation that the partners reached thanks to project’s development. The impact exceeded the expectations. It can be seen in partners’ organizations, their staff and learners, PWD and trainers, operators in the field of adult education. The most important is that all who participated in activities or at least heard about its results, have better awareness about inclusive training, social inclusion and the particular needs of PWD. In addition, the usage of e-courses themselves helps in increasing ICT skills. One of the very concrete and direct proof of project’s impact is example of 3 Polish PWD who due to project activities joined the open labour market – more about it is written in ‘follow up’ section of this report. Project was addressed to trainers of PWD and PWD themselves and it is expected that the benefits in the form of better skills will have long-term character in their lives. However, a significant group benefiting indirectly were VET education centres, VET schools, organisations working with PWD, their associations, NGOs. These organisations will benefit from using the guides and e-courses. As the guides are available for downloading from the website and the e-courses are open to public and they will be maintained for next years, it is expected that it will be used by the organisations for longer time bringing them benefits.