Social and Labour Integration of theDisable

Social and Labour Integration of the Disabled (SLID) is an 11-partner project designed to contribute to the quality of life of over 250.000 persons with disabilities who live in project target areas of the Adriatic basin including Croatia, Italy, BiH, Montenegro and Albania. This will be done through development of effective, innovative and integrated cross-border cooperation paths of intervention for their social and labour integration. The specific objectives of the Proposed Project are: 1. To raise public awareness and stimulate information dissemination and mainstreaming about issues related to people with disabilities and the social model of intervention in order to create the most favourable conditions to their full integration. 2. To build, reinforce and sustain the innovative networking and cooperation between the targeted Adriatic territories, among public bodies and private actors; service providers, disability associations and employers. 3. To design, promote and sustain a Lifelong Learning System Initiatives, VET (Vocational Education Training), able to facilitate the access of the disabled to VET and labour opportunities, thus increasing their employability and competitiveness in the open labour market; 4. To analyse, verify and improve the employability conditions of the disabled in the target Adriatic territories, through promotion of a concerted paths of interventions able to establish and sustain networks promoting the access to work for the disabled; 5. To stimulate and facilitate the exchange of technical, scientific and managerial expertise among the stakeholders relevant to social and labour integration of the disabled in the target Adriatic territories and to facilitate the exchange of good practices between local government, public institutions, civil society organisations and employers. SLID is expected to impact upon the following target groups: 600 persons with disabilities who will benefit directly from project activities, app. 100 project partners’ staff, 120 experts / qualified staff, and 2.500 stakeholders in 5 countries (200 key stakeholders such as institutions, VET centres, and NGOs for persons with disabilities, centres for social services, employment agencies, employers). SLID is also intended to influence the improvement of capacities of target communities to respond to the needs of persons with disabilities through provision of equal access to rights and opportunities. It is also expected to produce Integrated SLID Recommended Paths for Social and Labour Integration of the Disabled for future reference and potential replication in wider Adriatic basin. Hence, SLID partnerships have been carefully balanced between local and regional governments (3), public institutions (3), private non profit (4), and profit organizations (1) in order to achieve greater impact on how inter-sector, bottom-up and cross-border cooperation is fostered and facilitated, and sustainability of the project secured. SLID is organized in 8 complementary and cross-cutting Work Packages (WP) that will be implemented over the period of 30 months. Project Interventions will focus on following programmatic areas: public awareness, education and employability of persons with disabilities; empowerment of stakeholders; user-friendly and accessible cross-border knowledge base and networks, and recommended paths of interventions for future reference. Respecting CBC principles agreed upon during joint project preparation initiated by DES and Split-Dalmatia County, a joint project management and coordination, staffing and financing will be secured. SLID implementation will be directed, supported and supervised by the LB (Split-Dalmatia County) and two committees: the Management Committee (MC) and the Scientific Committee (SC).