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FairCare Erasmus+ international project
Project title:
Fair Care
Learning and Training for Inclusion and Self-determination in Long Term Care 
Project duration:
01.10.2024.- 31.05.2027.
Partner organisations:
Verein zur sozialen und beruflichen Integration e.V. – GERMANY
Cooperativa Sociale Cooss Marche Onlus Societa Cooperativa Per Azioni – ITALY
Ske Pelendriou – CYPRUS
People First Közhasznú Egyesület – HUNGARY
Social Enterprise International Tuatha Ltd – IRELAND
3IN Social, SCCL – SPAIN
Project summary:
The innovation of the FairCare project is the involvement of all groups participating in the development of independent living. People in need of care, family members and carers, as well as institutional staff are thinking together.
FairCare will develop a holistic and comprehensive training program in close collaboration with the target groups, implemented in local FairCare Training Centres to empower people with disabilities and/or in need of care to exercise self-determination in long term care. This will support them in effectively communicating their own needs and desires to their informal (e.g., relatives and partners) and formal carers (e.g., professional nurses) and, thereby, exercising greater self-determination in their daily lives.
An Advisory Team of the three target groups will be set up in each country to advise and shape the project’s work before decisions are taken.
Three types of trainings will be developed:
1. peer training for disabled / elderly people to become peer counsellors,
2. cooperation training for the collaborative work of the three target groups,
3. community training on the provision of long term care.
Project outputs:
A FairCare Methodology will give an overview over the theoretical background.
The FairCare Curriculum and Course will be supported by the FairCare Toolbox containing, video tutorials and the online FairCare collaboration tool.
The trainings will be facilitated in partner countries locally established FairCare Training Centres.
The FairCare Handbook will provide hands-on guidance for practitioners in social and care services on how to adapt FairCare. The FairCare Memorandum supports this with a mission statement.
Target groups:
1. The primary target group are elderly and people with disabilities in need of care who want to live a self-determined life in their chosen living environment with adequate support services provided.
The group of elderly people and people with disabilities is very heterogeneous. Yet, many people acquire their impairments due to age. Hence, elderly people might not view themselves as disabled but in fact share similar experience such as not being viewed as being able to live autonomousand self-determined whilst receiving high-levels of support.
2. The secondary target group are relatives, friends and other informal carers who provide them with the necessary care and support services, which the professional care system does not provide or cannot provide sufficiently in the desired form and quality. As those affected, they too have individual needs and challenges that inform the desired and necessary approach to support. However, informal carers are most often neither sufficiently equipped with the training and skills to carry out their tasks nor viewed as knowledgeable and experienced resources in the organisation and provision of care.
3. The tertiary target group are formal carers who want to work in a support and care system in which they contribute their professional skills in such a way that people in need of care live as self-determinedly, safely and independently as possible and can participate in social life.
The aim is for all three target groups to interact in a closely cooperative way.
In addition to the organisations of the project partners, other target groups include self-advocacy and self-representation associations of relatives and people in need of care and support, professional associations, municipal decision-makers and social service providers.
The main task of People First Association as a Hungarian partner in the project is:
As in all international projects, our main task is to advocate the principle of “Nothing about us without us!”, i.e. to involve people with disabilities in every level, as they are the best experts in their field.
People First is responsible for the full accessibility of the FairCare project. In the training material, we will develop a chapter on “Self-determination and self-empowerment of people in need of care”. We will develop a FairCare digital collaboration tool. Our association will be responsible for developing a Exploitation Plan and a Communication Strategy, as well as for coordinating activities on social media and the website.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.
Pécs City Civil Financial Framework 2024
Project title:
Pécs Városi Civil Keret 2024/Pécs City Civil Financial Framework 2024
Project duration:
01.06.2024.– 30.11.2024.
Supporter:
Local Government of Pécs
Project summary:
We will continue what we started last year. With the support of the City of Pécs, we will add 5 more truly accessible sites in Pécs and around Pécs to our Accessible Pécs Database.
The database has set an example for the city of Pécs. Its maintenance should be part of the city’s marketing, as its tourism marketing power is significant. There are only few areas of social problems that can connect so many target groups as accessibility.
Accessible places and programmes are a basic need for people with disabilities, and equally important for elderly people and parents with prams. But the temporarily disabled, and people with suitcases or shopping bags, also a great help. And EVERYONE is more comfortable in a barrier-free environment!
There is no list or map of accessible locations in Hungary. For people with disabilities, however, predictability is essential.
Therefore, in 2018, our association was the only one in the country to create a free Pécs city database of accessible locations in and around Pécs. In recent years, we have developed this from small grants, mostly from our own resources, into a professional one.
The aim is to provide urban populations with detailed and reliable information on accessible locations. Information is available in 12 categories, free of charge, in Hungarian and English, illustrated with many own photos, map display and contact information.
It also aims to develop barrier-free tourism in Hungary, to attract and inform tourists visiting Pécs (this is why it is also available in English). Since then, there has been no similar urban barrier-free database in the country.
The Barrier-free Pécs Database is available free of charge on our website in Hungarian and English: https://peoplefirst.hu/en/barrier-free-pecs/
Goal:
Training for the professional team of disabled people exploring the sites of the Barrier-free Pécs Database.
Exploration of 5 additional sites in Pécs and around Pécs during the project period.
Work is ongoing to strengthen existing cooperation with the town hall and to expand partnership building with other organisations.
Based on our measurements and domestic and international feedback, the citizens of Pécs and visitors feel a serious need for the Barrier-free Pécs Database and are happy to use it. We have recently taken steps to make this even more so in the future. Experts have helped us to optimise the website and database for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), i.e. to reach as many users as possible.
The social sensitization effect of the database is extremely important for both disabled and able-bodied society! Therefore, the Barrier-free Pécs Database and the Hidden City Tor-Tour are closely complementary activities.
Target groups:
Our basic target group is people with disabilities. We do not focus on one group, since the membership of our association is also made up of people with all types of disabilities.
Our wider target group is the entire urban population and visitors. And EVERYONE who needs accessibility or is more comfortable living without barriers.
How does the project work?
In June 2024, an exploration team will be set up with professionally qualified participants with disabilities. We will conduct a preparatory training and create a detailed schedule and task list.
Between June and October 2024, 5 completely new barrier-free sites will be explored and recorded in Hungarian and English in the database.We will work in teams of 3 people, with disabled, visually impaired and assisting association members, including a hearing impaired member as needed.
Meanwhile, the IT maintenance and repair of the database is ongoing.
In November 2024, we will evaluate the results of the project and prepare for future tasks and funding opportunities.
Results and impact of the project:
People with disabilities do this work, as they are the best experts in their field/problems. They receive continuous professional training in the project. For them, this is a significant social inclusion opportunity: new skills, useful activities, earning money, learning, inclusion, empowerment, community building.
More sites are added to the Barrier-free Pécs Database. This is a great contribution to making Pécs more attractive and to the development of accessible tourism in Hungary.
Project sustainability:
In cooperation with the city, our database is part of the https://pecs.hu/en/ website.
We would be glad if the city administration, the city companies, and the city residents would be proud that such an initiative exists in Pécs, and more and more people would use and recommend it.
WHY campaign 16: WHY disability terms should be constantly changed?
This Why? is a bit more for Hungarian speakers, as we are discussing Hungarian terms of disability. But it can also be exciting to follow the changes in Hungary as a foreigner. Is it just Hungarian or is it a general phenomenon? We look forward to your comments below.
I could ask the question “what shall I call you”, if I want to quote our great poet Petőfi.
First, a little about the naming conventions we currently use.
There are two terms we use for disability in Hungary today: perhaps the most accepted is person living with disability. Why? Because it expresses that I have a disability – in my case a visual impairment – that is not part of my personality, but that I live with.
The other most commonly used term is a disabled person, which is used in legislation, literature and official places.
I fully agree with those experts who take the view that the two terms most commonly used today should be used in conjunction with the words “person”.
Previously, the word disabled was used quite naturally. Opinions are very divided on whether this is offensive or not. What is certain is that nowadays the word is used by many people as a abusive word, and has unfortunately become a kind of slang.
In general, the term injured is often used, but I think it is appropriate when used in conjunction with the type of disability, such as mobility impaired, visually impaired, hearing impaired. In itself, ‘injured’ can strengthens a damaged consciousness. Or it may not indicate an existing disability, but a temporary injury following an accident. In this way, a bruise or cut is also an injury.
The starting point however, is the use of now socially unacceptable terms such as stupid, crazy, cripple or idiot. Indeed, in the 19th century, these were common everyday and technical terms!
Stupid was the word for dumb, and then the word was applied to the mentally handicapped, but not in a pejorative sense, simply as a term. The same goes for idiot, used for people who didn’t understand social rules because they had a lower level of intelligence. And cripple was a general term for the physically handicapped.
The first institution for the mentally handicapped opened its doors in 1875 in Hungary in Rákospalota under the name of “The First Hungarian Institute for the Education and Care of the Stupid”.
And in the early 1800s, a “public madhouse” was founded, which, according to the custom of the time, excluded disabled people from society and locked them up in institutions.
Another noteworthy term from József Roboz is the “weakly able”, which he mentions as a title in the first textbook he wrote on the concept of differentiated education.
Disease or condition? The question is a very good one, because I think disability is a condition that is either congenital or acquired later, i.e. it has been around for a certain period of time. In fact, it is usually the result of a disease, which is why I think the word ‘condition’ is more appropriate for disability.
There are also many different names for the types of disability. Each type of disability can be divided into several subgroups in order to distinguish the degree of disability. But it’s very much up to the individual person with a disability to decide which one they feel is their own, or which one is offensive to them. For example, I belong to the blind subgroup of the visually impaired, but I prefer to be called visually impaired. It’s worth remembering that we don’t need to know how much a visually impaired person can or cannot see, or how disabled a disabled person is, whether they are in a wheelchair or use a cane. It is therefore easiest to use the generic terms for a particular group of disabilities, to avoid awkward situations.
Why are names important? The most important thing is to always be respectful and to always respect the human dignity of the person concerned when referring to people with disabilities. Not just in their presence.
And back to the basic question, why do we have to keep changing the terms?
The main reason I think is, that society is constantly picking up on the technical terms originally used for people with disabilities. And they start to use it in hurtful, pejorative terms – mostly by able-bodied people to each other. It’s especially common for young people to call each other ‘disabled’ if someone doesn’t understand something the first time, or simply to insult or belittle. The same change has happened to our words ‘stupid’, ‘lame’, ‘cripple’, ‘crazy’, etc.
And people with disabilities themselves, and the profession dealing with them, now have to come up with particularly complex, unremarkable and strange ways of putting a name to what was and is a simple, understandable name.
Isn’t that crazy too?? Instead of fleeing forward, we should be educating society in kindergarten, school, family and everywhere. So that they stop throwing around words about people with disabilities, their condition, when they want to insult someone.
Written by Evelin Almádi and Veronika Pataki, also based on Panna Kaszás’ university thesis
Study tour in Pécs on our Hidden City project
Our Polish and Czech partners visited us for a three-day study tour in Pécs. In the framework of our project “Walk in our shoes”, supported by the International Visegrad Fund, we presented our Hidden City Tor-Tour to our project partners as a best practice.
On a beautiful sunny morning of the meeting, Gergő Berkes the leader of the Hidden City Tor-Tour, and his support partner Zoltán Borsodi gave a walk through the city centre, from a barrier-free perspective. And that afternoon, in our BeFogadó community space we discussed the experiences so far, listened to the Polish and Czech project reports and planned future tasks. Even a tasting of Pécs wines and an accessible visit to Cella Septichora fitted into our programme. 🙂
The study tour was the first step to visiting each other. The People First Association had previously provided an online training to Fundacija Sowelo and EYCB members on how they could create similar sensitizing city-walks. Now they have been further helped by seeing us lead a Hidden City Tor-Tour live. Fortunately, we have enthusiastic partners who not only enjoyed the walk, but also gave us very useful opinions and suggestions for improvement!
In the current phase of the project, partners have developed their individual methodologies to organise their own Hidden City Walks.
We are looking forward to the next study tours in Poznan/Poland in June, and Vrchlabi/Czech Republic in August, to see what the Polish and Czech versions of the Hidden City look like!
Thank you for being here and we’re so glad you enjoyed our city!
News from Poland
“We are still working on improving our city-walk. Monika has joined the
project team! We are very excited to start this collaboration.
Monika is active in supporting people with disabilities and has a lot of
experience in guiding groups. Participating in our project will allow
her to strengthen her competences.
We are actively preparing for the Pécs visit. Together we are
familiarising ourselves with materials and analysing best practices in
order to be able to participate sufficiently in the visit.
We can’t wait :)”
CODE Erasmus+ international project
Project title:
CODE – aCcessibility Of financial services for persons withDisabilitiEs
Foster social and financial inclusion through strategic partnership. Promoting joint initiatives among stakeholders based on the exchange of good practices and skills.
Project duration:
01.12.2023. – 31.07.2026.
Partner organisations:
Chambre de Commerce Italienne de Nice (COO) – ITALY
FondazioneIstitutodei Sordi di Torino ONLUS – ITALY
Fondazione Luigi Clerici – ITALY
Cooperation Bancaire Pour L’europe – BELGIUM
Atlantis Engineering S.A. – GREECE
Association De Patronage De L’institut Regional Des Jeunes Sourds Et Des Jeunes Aveugles De Marseille – FRANCE
Fundacio Privada Trinijove – SPAIN
People First Közhasznú Egyesület Pécs – HUNGARY
Financial inclusion is a challenge facing most EU countries. It was therefore essential to establish a broad transnational cooperation involving 8 relevant organisations from 5 different countries. In this way we are trying to enable this socio-economic challenge to be overcome.
Project summary:
The project aims to provide persons with disabilities with guidance to better access financial services and documents, and to adjust the financial services and products currently available to their needs.
Target groups of the project:
– persons with disabilities: the project aims to facilitate their understanding of the financial and banking sector through financial literacy training on the types of products and services available to them. The target group will be able to access the training materials through a web platform and related application.
– reaching the target group is also helped by the involvement of disability support networks and vocational training centers. These networks can benefit from the professional materials created and offer new services and support tools. At the same time, they can acquire new skills and knowledge in this field.
– vocational training trainers/instructors and service providers: they will have access to innovative training on access to financial services for people with disabilities. This will allow them to expand their course offerings in this direction.
Indirect target groups:
– financial institutions and banks, for whom the guidelines on the accessibility of financial services are useful information. This will enable them to design and implement more accessible services for all, while broadening their audience and reaching target groups that they have not yet reached. At the same time, managers and staff can acquire new skills through the project.
– SMEs (small and medium sized enterprises) and chambers of commerce, be able to develop good practices for integration in the workplace, learn about and apply good practices.
– political decision-makers who can further reflect on its social use by learning from the good practice training programme on financial inclusion for people with disabilities.
Involving target groups is a key element of the project, so stakeholders are involved in the national teams from the start as focus groups, brainstormers and testers.
Project outputs:
The innovation of the CODE project is that it promotes the application of the universal design model and social inclusion to the financial, banking, insurance and business environment. CODE is a pilot project that aims to enhance financial literacy among people with disabilities.
It will foster inclusion of the target group in the financial system and access to financial products/instruments by the collection and sharing of best practises of inclusion at EU level (IO1) and the creation of an interactive map for users i.e. a platform and an app that everyone can use (IO2). The project will finally create a new training course composed of modules and guidelines to be used by trainers and people with disabilities to deal with banking institutions (IO3).
The main task of People First Association as a Hungarian partner in the project is:
As in all international projects, our main task is to promote the principle of “Nothing about us without us”. In addition, our main tasks are the design and development of the CODE inclusive platform in the framework of the training course and digital tools, in cooperation with the Greek partner. And in the framework of the piloting of the course, the final fine-tuning of the materials developed with the help of our association members.
👉Follow us on Facebook too: CODE project
The communication Platform is ready to launch
The first version of the common Platform, which presents the project, the International Visegrad Fund and international best practices has been prepared. It also acts as a discussion forum for partners. The Polish and Czech teams will add their ideas to the website developed by the Hungarian partner, and then the joint work on the Platform can start. We plan to make it public and open to all interested parties after the project closes.
The Polish team is almost complete with its own sensitising city walk, but the Czech team has also been formed and is developing contacts with the city government.
We will meet in Pécs in May to present the Hidden City Tor-Tour as a best practice of the Hungarian People First Association. We also agreed on the details of this in the March online meeting.
Polish sensitisation tour already in testing phase
News from Poland:
The Polish team Fundacja Sowelo started developing our own version of a sensitizing city tour. Our experts designed the route and evaluated the accessibility of the various attractions. Now the tour is in the testing phase.
We are excited about the possibilities and ideas that arise as we work together on the project.
An international group spreads the word about Hungarian “Hidden city”
“I never used to care about what was going on behind my back, but while sitting in a wheelchair it has become the most important thing”
“Somehow it never occurred to me that you not only have to go up a ramp, but also down. And it’s scary in a wheelchair”
“I will look at the world in a completely different way after trying the white cane”
A large international team is taking these experiences home with them by trying the People First Association’s Hidden City Tor Tour again. (https://peoplefirst.hu/blog-post/rejtett-varos-tor-tour-a/)
Once again, they will pass on to many people those useful experiences that are not enough to say, they must be lived!
The team, coming from several countries, participated in a conference entitled “Disabilities and abilities framed by context” in the framework of the EDUC project of the University of Pécs/Hungary. At this conference Veronika Pataki, president of People First Association, presented our Accessible Pécs Database (https://peoplefirst.hu/akadalymentes-pecs/) to the international audience. The additional programme of the conference (MICE-Tourism) was the Hidden City Tor-Tour in the evening, led by our vice-president Gergő Berkes in his usual uplifting mood.
This is a fundamental objective for us, to offer our Hidden City Tor Tour as an accompanying professional programme for conferences, meetings and events in the framework of MICE Tourism. This programme on 16. January is a good example of this.
