PWD Hospitality

About

We are 4 organizations from different European countries running inclusive businesses within the hospitality industry by imploying people with disabilities. In 2019 we applied to the European Union in the frame of the Erasmus+ program to start a project to promote the inclusivity of the hospitality industry and to support the employment of youth with disability on the field.

The project wants to help young PwDs, professionals working in hospitality and also newcomers, who are planning to start their own inclusive business by starting international discussion, implement trainings, creating free training materials and making platform for experience exchange and connections.

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 becomes the helped one (client) and the helped one becomes the helper (service provider).

The first restaurant in Budapest, run by people with disabilities, called the Nem Adom Fel Cafe and Restaurant 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 in work with people with disbabilities, and it is one of the most innovatively functioning civil society organizations in this sector nowadays. It has about 200 disabled employees and has several social enterprises 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 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.

Background

Activities

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.

Training material

There will be a special training material created which will give a guide on how to prepare and educate youth with disability to work on the open labour market, especially in the hospitality industry. The training material will be available in 5 languages (inc. Hungarian, Polish, Slovenian, Croatian and English) for free on this website. For download please go to the main menu and klick on "Training material".

Training for YwDs

A 3 days international training is planned to be held in Hungary for youth with disability, who are newcomers on the labour market and are interested in working in the hospitality industry. Some parts of the created training material will be introduced on the event. All the project countries will be able to delegate a group of 10 participants to this event.

Trainings for staff

By providing an opportunity for development for our workers we would like to improve the quality of the employment of PwDs on the hospitality industry. There will be 4 trainings held in 4 countries (Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia and Poland) for workers with and without disability in the hospitality industry to learn about how to run a succesful social enterprise and employ PwDs in the hospitality sector.

Disseminational events

4 events are planned (one in each participating country - Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia and Poland) to introduce the created training material for all people who are interested in the topic. We especially would like to invite employers, business owners, organizations who have or plan to have a business in the hospitality industry. With the training material and the disseminational events we would like to encourage them to employ PwDs in there places.