VIEWS International in cooperation with five partner organizations from Germany (2 promoters), Italy (2 promoters) and France (1 promoter) want to establish a 16 months strategic partnership, from 1/10/2015 till 30/04/2017, which aims developing:
- a strong partnership between the partners of the project
- attracting more institutions that could hire or offer internships for young visually impaired young persons
- sensitization and awareness raising sessions for public job related institutions which will help these services to get a better understanding of the living condition vision impairment.
We aim at improving the employment environment of vision impaired persons, by decreasing attitudinal barriers, imparting of important knowledge and raising awareness for their strengths and needs.
This project will involve in the same time institutions with different profiles, all working for the integration of visually impaired persons, and young visually impaired persons (mainly unemployed). We estimate the number of the persons involved in this project at 1000.
This project will include: 3 transnational meetings, 4 long term mobility projects, 4 multiplier events (1per country) and 40 awareness national sessions (10/country). The intellectual outputs will be an awareness brochure and a policy paper which will be disseminated among different European and national stakeholders.
The methodology used will mix several types of non-formal means: brainstorming, working in small groups, debates, peer to peer learning, public debates, training & info sessions etc.
We expect that with this project we will build a strong partnership, where more institutions will join this partnership and that all together we can build the second part of the strategic partnership (2017-2019), where more young visually impaired will be involved and more employers will be aware about the benefits of hiring a visually impaired person in their working environment.
The impact can be measured by how many future employers will join our project and how many young visually impaired persons will find a job after participating at this strategic partnership project.
This strategic partnership will improve the interaction between different employment institutions, employers and visually impaired beneficiaries.
Check here the Activity Agenda
Please find below the results of this project:
1) Brochure
2) Policy paper
Agenda of Activities
Transnational Meetings
- 15-18 November 2015 Belgium¨Check here the programme
- September/October 2016 Italy
- December2016/January 2017 Germany
Long Term Mobility of Youth workers
Each mobility project will last 3 months.
- 1 Belgian youth worker will go to GIAA, France.
- 1 Italian youth worker from Istit. Rittmeyer will work with VIEWS International Belgium
- 1 youth worker from DBSV Germany will work at Aforisma Italy
- 1 youth worker from GIAA France will work at LWL BBW Soest, Germany
Four National Multiplayer Event in November 2016 in each country.
Four local awareness sessions per country from January till December 2016.
We are also planning two intellectual outputs:
- Sensitization and awareness raising sessions for job related public institutions [December 2015-October 2016]
- policy paper January-December 2016
For the multiplayer event and local awareness sessions we will publish the dates as soon as they are known.
Follow the project’s Facebook page at: www.facebook.com/vipawranessrasiongonunemployment and our website to know them.
First Transnational Meeting in Liège Belgium
We are pleased to inform you that the first of three Transnational Meetings about our strategic partnership “VIP awareness raising on unemployment” took place in Liège, Belgium from 15th till 18th of November 2015.
With this project we would like to support visually impaired persons (vip) not only to be prepared to find employment but to help them enter the working environment as easily as possible, to break down the prejudices, and raise awareness of the potential and capabilities of vip to future employers who may hire or offer internships. And on the other hand to establish a strong cooperation with public and local institutions to improve and facilitate this integration in the labor market.
At this meeting, participants from Views International gathered with partners from France (GIAA/Views France), Italy (Aforisma & Istitutto Rittemeyer) and Germany (DBSV & LWL Soest). Where the whole project was presented in detail: the aims, the intellectual outputs, future events and the budget.
In the beginning each partner presented their own organization: what they do and what they do for the visually impaired and blind in terms of employment.
Most of the meeting was focus on talking about the situation of the visually impaired and the integration in the labor market in each participant country.
This gave an overview of the working situation of VIP in all involved countries.
The majority of the participants are visually impaired and blind persons who are really interested and personally involved in these programs and give a concrete and practical contribution.
Second Transnational Meeting
After a very fruitful first meeting, which took place in Liège (Belgium) between 15th and 18th November 2015, the partners gathered once again, this time in Trieste (Italy), the frontier city which gave birth to geniuses such as Italo Svevo and Umberto Saba. The meeting was held between 25th and 27th January 2016 and saw the participation of members from Belgium (VIEWS International), Germany (DBSV & LWL Soest) and Italy (Aforisma & Istituto Rittmeyer). Most participants were visually impaired people, who were personally involved in the programme and have already given concrete and practical contribution to the good development of the project.
The aim of the overall project is to support visually impaired people not only to find a job, but also to enter the labour market as smoothly as possible. To this end, it strives to eliminate prejudices and to raise awareness among employers on the potential offered by visually impaired people. It is hoped that, better informed on the subject, employers may either hire or offer an internship to the visually impaired person in question. Furthermore, the project wishes to establish a strong co-operation with public and local institutions, to improve and facilitate visually impaired people’s integration in the labour market.
In particular, this second meeting mainly focused on the activities that were carried out last year by the partners, as well as on the goals that still need to be accomplished before the end of the project, on April 30th 2017. Also, it was decided that the third and last meeting will be held in Berlin between 19th and 21st APril 2017.
Here you can read the meeting’s full programme.
Third transnational meeting
The meeting mainly focused on the evaluation of the following aspects:
- the 3-month experience of three youth mobility workers;
- the awareness-raising sessions about the current job situation of visually impaired people in the partner countries;
- the answers to the collected questionnaires, which are going to be used for a recommendation letter for the European Commission.
Participants also discussed the final content, layout and dissemination of the brochure “All about VIPs in Europe”, which will provide a general overview of visual impairment (blind vs. partially sighted, mobility, assistive technology…) as well as job-related information (work-based assessment, most common jobs for VIPs, job search, current situation in the partner countries etc.). The broochure will be on our website very soon.
All participants agreed that, despite some minor organizational problems, this strategic partnership was a very fruitful one. However, everybody agreed that there’s still a lot of room for improvement in order to foster visually impaired people’s access to the labour market. The Belgian and Italian partners also said they would be interested in working together on another project. We’ll keep you informed about this last point.