Inclusion for People with Disabilities in Colombia

A new proposal for training that facilitates employability

At MAKAIA we are excited to work on a new challenge: We are transforming our training proposals based on the opportunities of the environment, the analysis of available figures, contact with organizations of great experience and evaluation of the most demanded competences for the employability of people with hearing disability.

How are we doing this?

Currently, we are developing a series of meetings with facilitators who have devoted their entire lives to training within organizations that have worked for decades to include people with hearing disabilities. During these encounters we collect key information that connects and reach agreements on the expectations of people with the opportunities that exist in the workplace, because gradually, business organizations have found more reasons to promote inclusion and have been surprised with the outstanding results of incorporating people with special abilities into their teams.

In the region, the commitment to inclusion has been promoted by different social and economic sectors which have formed working groups and generated proposals to advance from different approaches, in this work they have obtained data and figures that allow interested organizations to access to inputs to achieve greater relevance and efficiency in the interventions, so that efforts are not duplicated and activities complement each other: thus our beneficiaries gain more

During this task we have met wonderful people in each of the places we have visited and we are sure that it will continue to be so in those that we have yet to find, there will be thousands of experiences to tell that we will continue to build together, because -thanks to the trust that hundreds of people like you have had in this process-, we have dared to imagine a world where hearing disabilities does not represent any obstacle.

For the second semester of 2019 we will take to the action all these learnings with training pilots that will involve the most outstanding findings and we will seek to connect with elements, tools and new links to know the impact of our actions. We are changing the lives of people with the help of technology.

Links:

• Our project website

At MAKAIA we are convinced that technology is a tool that enhances access to opportunities in communities. That is why we constantly generate spaces where, by identifying the characteristics and needs of different population groups, we build contents that allow us to accompany them in the use of technology, adapting to their realities and adding value to the activities they carry out or could carry out on their daily basis. 

Among the population groups we work-with are people with hearing disabilities, for whom, during the month of February of this year, we developed a digital literacy process in a 4-hour workshop, focused on the basic technological tools for administrative processes, search for information and construction of presentations. 

Once again, we were able to resume an alliance that has been successful in the past and contacted the EPM Foundation, who kindly joined the process, facilitating the use of space and computer equipment from one of the Training Rooms of the EPM Library. Due to its public nature, its recognition in the community and its location (in the center of the city), having this place to host the workshop benefited the registering process, that we also displayed through our social networks and using WhatsApp messaging. Our invitation reached unexpected allies of various programs of the city that work for the inclusion of the population with disabilities and that helped us to spread the invitation and get to people who sign up and had never been in our workshops, who therefore meet us for the first time with this activity. 

Finally, we had 14 participants of different ages (children, youth and seniors), who expressed their approval of the activity and requested more spaces to continue learning and meet more people with hearing disabilities. Our trainer dedicated individual support spaces and it was common to see the participants help each other, constantly approaching other people’s desk and interacting with them to clarify the concepts that our facilitator expressed on the screen that served as a board. 

For this reason, we conclude that the workshops are also important meeting spaces, where people with disabilities find common ground and collaborate with each other to learn about technology. We also re-affirm our goal of continuing to provide these spaces, with the support of all our donors in the network of GlobalGiving. Thank you for making it possible!

Links:

• Workshop invitation in our website
• Workshop invitation in our Facebook Page