DOMAS

Project duration: 1.3.2022. – 1.3.2024.

Project reference: 2021-2-DE04-KA220-YOU-000050925

Grant amount: 178.551,00 €

Donor: JUGEND für Europa, the German National Agency for the Erasmus+ Youth programme

Project results: https://erasmus-plus.ec.europa.eu/projects/search/details/2021-2-DE04-KA220-YOU-000050925

Project partners:

• Outreach Hannover e.V., Germany
• DOMAS – training, consultation and business services, Croatia
• Out of the Box International, Belgium
• Company for professional rehabilitation and employment of persons with disabilities
  ITECCION, Serbia
• Centre for Non-formal education and Lifelong learning (CNELL), Serbia
• LINK DMT SRL, Italy
• Association for improvement of modern living skills “Realization”, Croatia

Summary:

Financial crisis such as the ones in 2008 as well as the recent crisis with Covid-19 pandemic have caused an increase of unemployment rate. The consequences of such crisis are mainly noticed among youngsters who are in the planning of developing their professional career or in the start phases of it. On the other hand, career orientation and management is being recognised more and more as an essential aspect of one’s life. While businesses and institutions are constantly experiencing changes and adaptation to new trends in their operation, the need for new skills development from employees are unavoidable. Thus, there is a need for youngsters to be proactive when it comes to new skills development. While young people experience and choose different programmes to attend due to their curiosity in learning, there is a point in their life when they usually consider themselves as non-decided to which field or role they see themselves working in the near future. In many cases this results on working short time for different institutions or job positions and not being competent enough in a specific field or role. When youngsters are not aware of the strategy of connecting these dots/experiences for developing their career, they might end up feeling incompetent and unable where to continue further. This is mostly present in communities where economic difficulties are more recognised, so young people are obliged to find a job that will provide them income, regardless of their professional development.

Another important aspect and which is considered as a challenge when it comes to career planning is knowing oneself. Very often young people are triggered to follow their friends and choose the same field of study/work and later they see that they are not being adapted or motivated about their chosen field of study/work. This is a consequence of lack of self-reflection and things that motivate them, as well as lack of practical and quality education that highlights their talents and skills ownership. It can be said with certainty that there is a high number of people that are talented and skilled in some other job while they work elsewhere because of their certified education on that field and non-recognition of their talents earlier.

Across the EU, persons with disabilities are far less likely to be employed than persons without disabilities. The barriers to quality employment add to the problem of poverty and social exclusion faced by persons with disabilities. Barriers preventing access to the employment market are most of the times based on misconceptions and judgments on a person’s abilities. 

Our project “Youth work for career management with different abilities’ youngsters” focuses on inclusion of youngsters with disabilities within the career/employment development, by promoting their sense of initiative and entrepreneurship, as well as increasing their employability and career planning and management skills, as well as digital capacity.

With this project, we want our beneficiaries, youth with disabilities, to improve their skills of career management, and we also aim to empower more youth workers for organising adequate career orientation, planning and development programmes, in line with the newest updates and cross-sectoral approach.

Motivation of partners in this project is to “equip” young adults with disabilities with set of skills needed to work on personal development in fields of career management and creating (self-)employment opportunities proactively in today’s reality of employment uncertainty and the world of extinction of many known jobs and occupation now and even more in the future. That new needed capacity are digital skills for (digital) employment, self-employment, or entrepreneurship – competence that can be trained and developed by gaining different skills, knowledge, attitudes through quality youth work and non-formal education.