Labs, Hubs & Foruns

Inclusive Community Forum

Education

Community Involvement in Education

Community involvement is vital for the sustainable transformation of any context. For this reason, ICF created the Inclusion LABs.

These LABs consist of working sessions for the co-creation and implementation of solutions to strengthen the skills of people with disabilities for working life. For these sessions, ICF invited a set of 41 participants from very diverse contexts and areas of professional and personal experience, who bring the necessary complementarity and cooperation to the implementation of Systemic Change.

As the work on this theme evolves, the participants focus on co-creating and implementing solutions that will enhance the empowerment of people with disabilities for working life. According to their power of intervention in the different aspects identified in the diagnosis, the participants are divided into seven different groups, always working in collaboration to achieve the common goal of this theme.

These sessions began in February and will end in December 2020, when the initiatives already tested in the field gain their autonomy and become sustainable. From that moment on, the Inclusion LAB groups follow their path autonomously, counting on ICF's support for a certain period (the so-called "follow-up to the Education theme").

Education

Find out more about ICF's projects in the field of education:

Companies
17
Companies
IPSS
14
IPSS
Higher Education Schools
3
Higher Education Schools
Relatives of People with Disabilities
3
Relatives of People with Disabilities
Schools Regular Education
2
Schools Regular Education
Vocational Education School
1
Vocational Education School
Town hall
1
Town hall

The 7 solutions developed in the Inclusion LABs were

The "Inclusive School" stamp emerges as a project to empower schools to be more inclusive and prepare students with disabilities for an active life.  

In response to an initial inclusion diagnosis that is made on each school, an action script is developed with recommendations for greater inclusion and, later, support is given for the implementation of the proposed strategies.  

In the end, the "Inclusive School" stamp is awarded to schools that show high levels of inclusion. Through this initiative, schools are better prepared to train all their students.  

The project " Learning While Teaching" aims to empower teachers to prepare their students with disabilities for an active life and does so by implementing active learning methodologies in the classroom context.  

Through the development of sessions, and during the natural course of a class, special education technicians provide support and strategies to teachers in the points where they say they have greater difficulty in relation to certain students, making the teachers increasingly autonomous in empowering their students.   

The "ComPIT" project aims to promote vocational experiences under the Individual Transition Plan (PIT). Through the development and use of a platform, it aims to connect companies interested in receiving students for PIT internships and PIT students interested in having an experience in these companies.  

The platform intends to make an automatic match between the company and the student. To do this, both companies and schools enroll on the platform and detail what positions are open and the profiles of the PIT students.  

Thus, by completing these internships in companies, young people are exposed to different and demanding realities, which results in training that is more aligned with what the labor market demands of them. 

The Training to Inclusion project was created to reinforce the capacity of people with disabilities to adapt to different and demanding environments. This project aims to promote internships in companies, focused specially on social adaptation, for people with disabilities throughout their training paths. This training leads to the development of relationship skills, promoted from an early age by contact with the labor market.

The "Trained to Be Integrated" project came up with the aim of promoting greater alignment between training and what the active life requires. 

Thus, the "Trained to Be Integrated" project promotes professional training experiences in companies so that, by getting practical experience with the subjects covered in a more theoretical context, young people can be better prepared for the future.  

As a way of developing the social skills of people with disabilities, there is the "Empowered to Be Employed" project. This project consists of two complementary trainings in social skills aimed at peers – people with disabilities and IPSS technicians who accompany them.   

The first training is carried out through Accenture's Platform “+Competências”, which guarantees the essential foundations for social skills.   

In turn, the "Vencer no Mundo do Trabalho" training consists of three face-to-face sessions, facilitated by employees of Millennium BCP, in which the basic topics are deepened. 

These trainings help young people to develop the skills needed for an active life. 

The project "Empowering in Higher Education" aims to train higher education professors for teaching students with disabilities, thus encouraging the attendance of students with disabilities in higher education.  

This project is based on two strands. On the one hand, the preparation of guides to support teachers and, on the other hand, the holding of clarification sessions at the beginning of each semester, increasingly improving the preparation of professors to teach all their students.