Who knows best about the challenges veterans and people with disabilities face in education and employment? They themselves!
Therefore, representatives of veteran organizations and communities of people with disabilities were invited to a joint meeting to learn about their needs for education and work. And accordingly, plan their activities and assistance programs.
"It was also important for us to include representatives of state and municipal structures, educational institutions and business associations in the discussion. So that they could share their support mechanisms, experience of interaction with target groups to coordinate approaches. In order to combine resources with maximum benefit and avoid duplication of services," said Anatoliy Pavlenko, Deputy Director of the Light of Hope NGO.
During the meeting, expert opinions were gathered about the services they receive in sufficient quantities and learned about priority areas of support.
"Now it is very important to promote the creation of even small veteran businesses. And not always a veteran is ready to immediately hire an employee, as most state programs require. Therefore, international organizations can help in this by providing grant support for veterans and their family members to start their own business, without the mandatory employment of other persons," shared Taras Lelyukh, head of the Business Association of Defenders of Ukraine "Kolovorot Areyiv".
"For people with hearing impairments, there is mostly no problem with accessibility barriers. I mean architectural ones. But there is a big communication problem. For us, it would be important to encourage employers to hire people with hearing impairments. So that communication problems are not an obstacle. Because it is possible to train them, but it is very difficult to employ them," noted Nataliya Falko, head of the Poltava territorial organization of the Ukrainian Association of the Hearing Impaired.
These and other developments will be used to plan activities within the project "Support for the social and financial recovery of war-affected communities in the Poltava region."
"We realized that this is a very necessary event and it is worth continuing. This is the first step. We heard different points of view. When we see the situation from one side, some other person or organization sees it from another. And thanks to joint work, we can identify these gaps. What is important for us, what is important for everyone in general, to understand where to move next," - Olha Korshuk, deputy head of the JERU project.
The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and implemented by the Light of Hope NGO in partnership with JERU (Joint Emergency Response in Ukraine of the international NGOs Welthungerhilfe and Concern Worldwide).
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