FARming as an employment opportunity for people with Mild Intellectual Disability Erasmus Project

Project Title

FARming as an employment opportunity for people with Mild Intellectual Disability

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 vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Disabilities – special needs; Agriculture, forestry and fisheries; Inclusion – equity

Project Summary

Employing hard-to-employ people in agriculture has been a topic of theoretical discussions in Europe, and it has been becoming increasingly significant in recent years. We are aware of the fact that the needs of people with mild intellectual disabilities for employment have been growing, especially in the countryside. Available jobs on farms should be a direct answer to such needs. Specifically, with the shortage of working positions, be it in the countryside or nearby urban areas, many people from this category remain unemployed. Due to specific population structures in the countryside, new positions should be created there. In fact, that might be the only way to ensure permanent and high-quality working positions.
Inclusion of people with mild intellectual disabilities (PMID), that affects about 5 million Europeans, on farms, has already been identified to have positive effect on PMID in terms of social care or therapy, but their potential as a suitable working environment for persons with disabilities is still highly underrated.

This kind of employments are also encouraged by EU policies and Strategies (Common Agricultural Policy 14-20, CORK Declaration 2.0, EU 2020) as social entrepreneurship represents a new opportunity for farmers with effect on social inclusion, poverty reduction and economic development in rural areas and it delivers innovative, inclusive and sustainable solutions for current and future societal challenges.

The general aim of the project FARMID is to promote employment of people with Mild Intellectual Disabilities (MID) on family farms and thus promoting social inclusion as improving economic situation of family farms.

This project’s direct target group are farmers, landowners and rural entrepreneurs, and farmers’ trainers; however, indirectly, our project aims to improve the lives of PMID and their caring families.

The project’s main objective was to develop a new comprehensive training programme and learning materials for farmers, entering in the field of social entrepreneurship on farms (or simply employment of PMID), to acquire adequate knowledge, skills, and competencies needed for employment and working with people with MID.

Project-specific objectives were:
+ To present an overview of national legislation in partners’ countries concerning social entrepreneurship and possible connection to the agricultural sector and identify possibilities of establishing social enterprise on farms for the employment of PMID.
+ To present best practices in the field of PMID on-farm employment in partner countries.
+ To develop & present special knowledge on how to work with, mentor and train employees with special needs.
+ To develop and implement a training programme for farmers in e-learning platform with interactive learning material.

The main results of the project are:
+Guidelines for sustainable employment of PMID in rural areas
+Developed case studies (13), gathering best practices in the field of employment of PMID on farms
+Developed curriculum: Training for sustainable employment of PMID on farms
+Developed contents of the training programme and e-learning platform
+Implemented 25-hours joint short-term staff training for 15 trainers, employees or members of the project consortium
+5 multiplier events, involving over 100 main sector stakeholders, such as farmers, farmer trainers, special needs educators, work rehabilitators, policymakers, representative of social service providers etc.
+pilot test of the developed platform with 35 participants from 4 countries
+promotional video in Slovenian and English, with subtitles to all consortium languages

The training materials (in English, Slovenian, German, Spanish, Italian and French) are freely available on www.farmid.bc-naklo.si and Erasmus+ project database making them available to a wide audience.
The most important impact, already shown by the project, was the employment of several people with mild intellectual disability on farms or farm-related jobs. Farmers have already expressed interest in PMID employment and are taking steps towards organising their agricultural enterprise direction. After the presentations of case studies, farmers have fewer restraints, related to PMID employment. FARMID training contents have already been used and are planned to be used in the future, partially or as a whole in some of the partners’ institutions or in connection to them (for example-with collaboration of CIA Umbria at University of Perugia, Biotehniški center Naklo – on secondary and tertiary level studies etc.) Other partners use gained knowledge in their daily work and further spread the knowledge amongst their members.
In relation to this project, some partners decided to further develop the topic in similar projects.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 270543,49 Eur

Project Coordinator

Biotehniski center Naklo & Country: SI

Project Partners

• UNION DE AGRICULTORES Y GANADEROS-JOVENES AGRICULTORES DE JAÉN
• On Projects Advising SL
• Grunt, zavod za socialno podjetnistvo na podezelju
• CHANCE B HOLDING GMBH
• CONFEDERAZIONE ITALIANA AGRICOLTORI REGIONALE UMBRIA
• EUROPEAN LANDOWNERS ORGANIZATION