Young workers with Disabilities in the Hospitality Industry Erasmus Project

Project Title

Young workers with Disabilities in the Hospitality Industry

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment; Disabilities – special needs; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

In Hungary and in the surrounding countries the participation of people with disabilities in the open labour market is still negligible. This situation is more severe in the hospitality sector. It often occurs that young people with different disabilities don’t have those basic social and communication skills being indispensable for holding their own in open labour market and getting the suitable job. The catering industry provides a great place for improving all these skills, moreover it could also play a major role in strengthening the social inclusion because when a person with disability provides service or help for a person without disability, then it means reversing the socially accepted roles. Hence the helper/service provider becomes the helped one/client and the helped one/client becomes the helper/service provider.
The first restaurant in Budapest, run by people with disabilities, called the Nem Adom Fel Cafe and Bar was opened in January 2016. The objective of this social enterprise is to give the disabled people the opportunity to work in catering industry and to set a good example by running a sustainable enterprise, that gives an answer to the current major social problems at the same time. The business was absolutely innovative because on the one hand it was opened as the first such place in the capital and on the other hand it operates not only as a restaurant but our primary aim was also to create an integrated and inclusive community space. The place was established by the Nem Adom Fel Foundation, having more than 10 years experience, and it is one of the most innovatively functioning civil society organizations in this sector nowadays. It has about 120 disabled employees and has several social enterprise like projects having run for many years. However, its operation is carried out by the main applicant called “Nem Adjuk Fel” Social Cooperative. Experience from the past years has proved the aforementioned: Improving the situation for young adult employees with disability on the labour market still requires a lot of work. The catering industry provides a great opportunity to strengthen the social inclusion and reduce the discrimination and it also allows the young people with disability to acquire communication and social competencies that can be to their great advantage in other aspects of life and employment. In the past 3 years we gained in the restaurant in Budapest by itself a great amount of experience and knowledge related to the employment of people with different kind of disabilities in catering industry and their preparation for work, let alone the other similar European restaurants. We would like to gather this knowledge to a certain extent, systematize it and share it with others in order to help them launch further similar initiatives and help the employees with disability get the opportunities for employment in this sector. We believe that training the people with disability in this field and using their skills in catering are modern and innovative ideas of which the general public has been completely unaware yet. The experience having been collected by us and our partners can’t be found elsewhere, thus with this consortium an intellectual property could be created and this is considered to be unique in Europe. Within the framework of our strategic partnership we would like to provide opportunity for development for those who have already been working in the catering industry with the help of organizing short-term trainings on the one hand and on the other hand we also would like to gather the experience of the restaurants functioning the same way in the partner countries and to compile a training material helping the young people (between the age of 18 and 30) with disability to be trained for holding their own in catering industry (even in the open labour market). The training material is compiled with the aim of developing the participants’ competencies in various fields and these have been summarized in 5 sections altogether. Compiling the knowledge material is carried out by the partners by making use of common, shared experience being available online for everyone and as a result of this they help people with disability to be employed and be more employable in the open labour market, moreover, to establish other similar social enterprises. Although the training material is primarily based upon the field of catering industry and focuses on it, we still think that it could be made good use of even in other fields because it is aimed at developing such basic key competences being vitally important in the open labour market and in other areas of life as well. The project also includes holding dissemination occasions aimed at motivating other employers and organizations to employ disabled young people themselves too with the help of the training material and to dare launch similar initiatives helphelping young people with disability to improve their labour market situation.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 177616 Eur

Project Coordinator

Nem Adjuk Fel Szociális Szövetkezet & Country: HU

Project Partners

• Bubamara Udruga osoba s invaliditetom Vinkovci
• CENTER ZA USPOSABLJANJE DELO IN VARSTVO DOLFKE BOSTJANCIC DRAGA
• Fundacja Ergo Sum Sztuka – Rozwój – Terapia – Przekraczanie
• Agentúra podporovaného zamestnávania n.o.