Training as Vehicle to Employment

Working with government agencies in several European countries to ensure that their trainee and internship programs are also open to qualified people with disabilities.

Training as Vehicle to Employment, TVE, was a two year project that started in January 2006 and ended in December 2007. It was part-financed by the European Union.

The project partnership consisted of eight member states: Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Latvia, Poland, Spain, Sweden and one associated partner, Bulgaria.

The project focused on national government agencies' traineeships to develop, test and promote a set of measures we hoped would make them inclusive regarding persons with disabilities. We contacted 1500 state agencies all around Europe and questioned them about their training positions, disability policies and accessibility work. The survey results are here: http://www.independentliving.org/training/accessibility-govt-training-en.html.
We have raised levels of awareness but it is outside the scope of the project to measure the effects of our efforts.

The survey shows how many of the agencies in each country were open to and clearly offered training opportunities for youth with disabilities. The results were presented on the website of the project and on the project member websites in their own language. Newsletters were produced and translated to the language of the country in question. When the project had established a dialogue with agencies and other strategically important partners the project coordinators could offer an arena for networking.
 
It turned out that in order to make a comparative evaluation between the countries a common platform had to be built where factors and target group had to be carefully defined.
 
Six newsletters with topics of best practice and accessibility have been disseminated to the partnerships vast network during the project time.

• Training as Vehicle to Employment Newsletter October 2006
• Training as Vehicle to Employment Newsletter September 2007
• Training as Vehicle to Employment Newsletter October 2007
• Training as Vehicle to Employment: Newsletter, November 2007
• Training as Vehicle to Employment: Newsletter, December 2007
• Training as Vehicle to Employment: Newsletter, January-February 2008

 

An information booklet for public employers about how to use traineeships/internships as a recruitment tool (pdf, 1MB). was produced within the project with an aim to assist state agencies in their work to use trainee programs and internships as a recruitment tool and how to make these programs open and inclusive for everyone. The booklet is available in several languages.

Booklet in all languages

• Bulgarian
• Finnish
• German
• Greek
• English
• Latvian
• Spanish
• Swedish

Comparison

See the comparison between several European state agencies’ training positions, disability policies and accessibility work.

For a more detailed description of the project and our methods please see the project proposal we used in our application.

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