DID.VALUE on internship and job in Society

The DID. VALUE project seeks to define and implement a holistic model that facilitates, through disruptive methodology, innovative integration methods, learning mechanisms adapted to the needs of young people, among other aspects, the social and professional inclusion of young people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, with regard to their entry and contact with the labour market, specifically with paid traineeships and jobs. In addition, the project team argue’s that the inclusion of this specific target group depends on their acquisition of digital literacy, communication and psychosocial skills and other job-specific competences. It also requires the engagement of different intervenient actors as family members, higher education institutions, potential employers, support agencies and regulatory institutions. It implies the need of a comprehensive and integrated model to understand the complexity of the IDD person employability issue and to create coordinated processes, methods, practices, resources and policy recommendations that can help to solve the problem in a systemic way. So, as the main goals of this project, we propose:

1. To enhance inclusive practices and initiatives, which involves several players or stakeholders and allow for young people with or without disabilities the possibility of acquiring a set of fundamental social, professional and technical skills, promoting large-scaled know-how in this diverse context, as well as to provide adapted and quality traineeships and jobs, in order for the participants to understand working methods and gain their own autonomous experience of being in the labour market.

2. To strengthen excellence in the application of this model by engaging a set of the learning process, based on competencies frameworks, in digital literacy, social skills and professional and technical skills, as effective strategies for social and labour market inclusion.

3. To develop, prototype and test an integrated inclusion support model that can be globally replicated by other institutions with practices, resources, methods in the digital literacy and ICT domains and connection processes to attain successful and sustainable social and labour inclusion.

The DID.VALUE project focuses on the area of social inclusion as a priority to be answered. In particular, regarding the provision of inclusive strategies for disadvantaged audiences, such as young people with intellectual and developmental difficulties. In this sense, this theme has generated increasing interest in today's society, becoming a priority for socio-economic policies.

Given the relevant nature of this theme, this project will have as a social impact on its participants, participating organizations and target audiences, the following aspects:

a) Ensure a set of social experiences (by entering a traineeship, employment or other similar activities, appropriate to the needs of participants) that effectively contribute to the acquisition of new knowledge, attitudes and social, professional and digital skills for an effective activation and learning of this target audience in inclusive contexts;

b) Disseminate a model of inclusive employability and sociability that will put less pressure on families or communities where participants are involved, particularly with regard to the concerns of these groups in view of a future or sustainable scenario for them.

c) Enable better interaction with the surrounding community (institutions, local entities, companies and other organizations), enabling participants to have greater autonomy and self-sufficiency.

d) Promote a model of social inclusion for youth at risk in society, ensuring opportunities for integration into the labour market and ensuring a more promising future for this type of target audience.

The project will benefit the various communities in which it is inserted (Social Dimension: participants, target audience, family, among others; Labour Dimension: companies; employers; organizations; Pedagogical Dimension: Higher Education Institutions; Schools and other training agents), in the sense that it will define a holistic model that seeks to respond to the main social and professional needs of the participants. Specifically, from a disadvantaged target audience. In addition, this project aims to extend its formal and non-formal links with a wide diversity of partners and stakeholders. Thus, reaching official protocols that facilitate the process of social and labour inclusion of this type of target audience, accelerating and easing the administrative processes that are inherent to this type of strategies. In this sense, the pedagogical, scientific, societal, technological, policy and economic impacts expected at the local, regional and national scope would consist in the fulfilment of our target group needs, but also in a change of behaviours in society (including change of policies).