DESIGN Project

One in six people in the European Union (EU) has a disability that ranges from mild to severe making around 80 million who are often prevented from taking part fully in society & the economy because of environmental and attitudinal barriers. For people with disabilities the rate of poverty is 70% higher than the average partly due to limited access to employment.’ (COM (2010) 636 final - European Disability Strategy (EDS) 2010-2020). The EU is a signatory entity at the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (UNCRPD) and has created through the European Commission leads the European Disability Strategy 2010-2020 which is organized in eight priority areas. Among these priorities we can naturally find employment in which is clearly stated the commitment to ‘(…) raise significantly the share of persons with disabilities working in the open labour market.’
DESIGN project is a three-year project funded by Erasmus+ programme and led by Afeji, which has established a partnership of seven organisations, from France, Romania, Portugal and Hungary. DESIGN stands for finding the most suitable person for a job, breaking discrimination cycles and society prejudice barriers that persons with disability face. DESIGN aims at delivering high job placement counselling services, both to people with disabilities, and for those employers with suitable job places.
DESIGN project is focused on:
• leading an evidence review in each partner country regarding good practices on the employability of persons with disabilities in the open labour market
• developing the right set of training courses to empower the services dealing with disabled person's employability
• fine-tuning the evaluation, counselling and guidance provided to the disabled person who wants to apply for a job
• creating a learning network platform to support Social Service providers, specialized in’ job placement
To achieve these aims the project foresees the development of a set of Intellectual Outputs (IO): IO1) Evidence review on people with disabilities job placement services; IO2) Job Profile Assessment tool and manual; IO3) Job Placement Services Learning programme manual; IO4) Communication toolkit and IO5) Job Placement Services model.

IO1 final report final in pdf format