Project: Taking Matters into our Own Hands: Employment and Entrepreneurship
Duration: 01.02.2024 – 31.01.2026
Reference Nr. 2023-2-HR01-KA220-YOU-000184352
Grant Amount: 250.000€
Donor: Erasmus+
Croatian Agency for Erasmus (The Agency for Mobility and EU Programmes)
The statistics indicate that young people with hearing disabilities and communication obstacles are more than twice as likely to be unemployed compared to hearing adults. Integrating these individuals into the job market is a key challenge; more than 50% of the one million people with hearing disabilities in Europe are unemployed, and those who are employed are often in low-skilled and low-paid jobs.
People with hearing disabilities can indeed contribute significantly to the labor market, but it’s essential to ensure they receive appropriate education and guidance when entering the workforce to realise their potential and enhance their competitiveness.
Those who teach or work with people with hearing disabilities must be familiar with the specificities of deafness, understand the obstacles faced, find the most appropriate solutions for them, and empower them to overcome the challenges they face and demonstrate their competencies and ambitions in the job market.
Similarly, people with hearing disabilities and communication obstacles should be familiarised with the demands of the job market and prepared for effective engagement within it.
For these reasons, the project “Taking Matters Into Our Own Hands: Employment and Entrepreneurship” focuses on two target groups of youth:
Partners in this project:
– Youth Power germany e.V (DE)
– Istituto ad ordinamento universitario “Scuola Superiore Carolina Albasio” (IT)
– Savez Gluhih i Nagluhih Grada Zagreb (HR)
– Learning Library OÜ (EE)
The development of a toolkit that includes innovative educational workshops and activities, and two online learning courses with educational materials and practical advice for raising skills and knowledge in career development and entrepreneurship.
The development of a curriculum for youth workers, enabling them to acquire knowledge and skills on how to provide career counseling and professionally guide deaf and hard of hearing persons, as well as persons with communication obstacles.
Raising awareness and informing the public, particularly youth organizations, organizations for the deaf and hard of hearing, educational institutions, and other institutions, about the specifics of deafness and communication obstacles, as well as the challenges they face in the job market. This will include offering concrete advice and recommendations for more successful work with deaf and hard of hearing young people, and young people with communication obstacles, through social media campaigns.
The development of a project website and an interactive online platform for youth workers, educators, and deaf and hard of hearing young people, containing educational materials in the form of articles, practical advice, stories from the target groups, and project-developed outputs, which will be permanently accessible.
The final conference where materials developed during the project implementation and the results of testing these materials will be presented.
Activities include development of educational materials and tools for youth workers in form of curriculum, for youngsters in format of toolkit, educational workshops and national trainings for testing and applying the materials. 2 online learning courses for empowering entrepreneurial and employability skills of deaf and hard of hearing youth will be developed. Project will have online depository platform developed, 5 online campaigns, and final conference event resulting in creation of network.
Curriculum for youth workers, a toolkit for educators, and two online courses for deaf and hard of hearing youngsters will be developed. The main output of the project will be an online platform hosting all of these outputs and additional educational resources. Raised awareness among professionals and dissemination of the developed outputs will be achieved through five online campaigns. A network will be the final output of the project, launched during the final project conference.
