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Aktion Mensch – InnClusive: independent living center in Pécs

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Project title:
Establishment of an Independent Living Support Centre for people with disabilities in Pécs

Duration of project:
01.07.2021. – 30.06.2024.

Supporter:
Aktion Mensch

Project summary:
As part of the german Aktion Mensch application, the People First Association – Pécs and its German partner VSBI will jointly set up a Centre for Independent Living in Pécs. The centre is an accessible counselling and meeting point for people with disabilities, their relatives and cooperating partners.Based on VSBI’s concept and experiences, the centre provides training, information and advice to the target group.

Target group: people with various disabilities in Pécs, as well as public and private actors

Project activities:

  • Establishing an accessible meeting point in cooperation with the House of Civil Communities in its separate building in the courtyard.
  • Independent living counseling and training by peer-counselors 
  • Building a network of supporters for independent living and establishing a peer-counseling system
  • Providing general information and holding public events with cooperating partners
  • Providing advice on independent living, accessibility and inculsion to people with disabilities and their relatives
  • Developing a person-centred independent living model, networking with other actors and self-representative organisations in Hungary..
  • Organisation of a regional conference on results.

The main objective is to strengthen social inclusion under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, in order to improve the independent living of disabled persons, to ensure their own choice of housing, and social participation.

This requires increasing the information provided to people with disabilities, civil society and public administrations about the UN Convention, inculsion, in particular the right to independent life, access to personal assistance, community services, strategic, implementation and financing models.

WHY campaign 12th: WHY are trolley and wheelchair different?

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Trolley or wheelchair? Most people think it doesn’t matter, because both are used by people who cannot walk. As a result, the choice of words is inconstant, causing a huge confusion in experts and in the people who use such equipment.

Considering, a trolley is something that needs to be pushed. It is a medical equipment, which cannot be used alone. The person sitting in one needs to be pushed by someone, this way handling certain situations is much easier and faster for the nurse. They are mostly seen in health care institutions, especially in american hospital series, where everyone is being pushed around in these, even if they are able to walk. You could also see trollies at airports, my mother was put in one as well, when she tried to communicate in hungarian in Switzerland. They asked her to sit in a trolley and pushed her to the correct gate, it was much more simple.

A wheelchair however, presumes activity, dare I say, it allows our main goal, independent living. They are used anywhere by the disabled in favor of their transport and access: when working, hiking, doing sports, taking a bus, going to the cinema, anywhere…. It is certainly smaller than a trolley. They could be moved by hand, motorized device can be put in front of it, or it could also be electronic, which however is a very heavy phenomena, approximately 100 kilos. There’s no need to push them by hand though, they have engines and they could be operated by various methods, even by our heads.

There is a separate category for the madcap people, who practice sports actively, so they have a special sports wheelchair. With these they can even play rugby, basketball or ride bikes – at a very high level.

 All in all: a trolley presumes passivity. If you use this expression instead of a wheelchair, it is hurtful for the disabled who don’t live passively at all.

Wheelchairs are necessities for an active life, when due to disabilities you cannot run around on both legs, but you still live your life just like anyone else.

Written by Veronika Pataki

ARTcoWORKers Erasmus+ international project

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Project title:
ARTcoWORKers
Arts and People with disabilities – cooperative digital working for inclusion during the pandemic

Project period:
01.04.2021. –  31.03.2023.

Supporter:
Erasmus+ KA2
Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices, KA227
 Partnerships for Creativity

Partner organisations:
VSBI Verein zur sozialen und beruflichen Integration e.V., GERMANY
KOPF, HAND und FUSS gemeinnützige Gesellschaft für Bildung mbH, GERMANY 
People First Association, HUNGARY
Citizen’s Association for Multimedia Art Theater, Creativity and Culture SHADOWS AND CLOUDS Skopje, The Republic of North MACEDONIA
VitalPed, NETHERLANDS

Project summary in a nutshell:
The Covid epidemic has been the most shocking affair worldwide of recent times for all. In addition to its many negative results we have learned a lot from it, which are worth exploiting in the future. The most important thing is that cooperation and joint forces are needed. Another lesson is that there are certain groups of society who are affected much more severely by a crisis. They need help first of all.
The ARTcoWORKers project has already put it in its name: four countries WORKs together to help people with disabilities in similar difficult situations, using one of the most commonly understood and usable languages, the ART.
In the meantime we are sensitizing to social inclusion and showing a new way for artists who are also strongly affected in Covid.

A little more details about the project:
We want to equip people with disabilities with the necessary instruments and skills to find creative and innovative solutions against the risk of exclusion and isolation, but also against the social challenge of ensuring the inclusion of people with disabilities even in the pandemic. In particular, opportunities are sought for how the cultural and creative industries can face these social challenges and make their own contribution to overcoming the pandemic. Special consideration should also be given to creatives and artists with disabilities.
On the other hand, the cultural and creative industries were also affected by significant restrictions and lockdowns by unemployment and no incomes. Artists and cultural workers with disabilities are particularly affected, too.
Therefore we saw a need for a transnational project, which organises on one hand an exchange of experiences of people with disabilities and the arts and cultural industry from different countries. On the other hand we find the manifold resources and creativity of the stakeholder groups, which shall be manifested through cooperative training in arts and culture, how to claim for equal rights and self determination, to overcome the restrictions of the pandemic and to cooperate in a fair manner to create new business, employment and incomes. 

The project will produce four core outcomes: 

  1. The ARTcoWORKers Methodology 
  2. The ARTcoWORKers Curriculum and course for people with disabilities in the field of active citizenship and creative work 
  3. The ARTcoWORKers Performing arts – 6 shadow theater plays 
  4. The digital ARTcoWORKers Platform/Tool Box 

In the partnership are cooperating together with inclusive adult learning experts for people with disabilities, self-representation organisation of people with disabilities, pedagogical and training experts, artists and theatre union as well as a specialist in creative and inclusive coworking and virtual topics. This variety of geographic, structural and business diversity makes the consortium very competent and strong. 

The project will have the following main impacts:

  • The involved people with disabilities are empowered and skilled to use arts and theatre play for self-representation and getting equal rights during a pandemic but also in other situations of discrimination. 
  • People with disabilities will have better and equal access to adult learning opportunities especially to digital learning. 
  • The broader local, regional and national public and the political decision maker are better informed about the UN CRPD, the rights of people with disabilities in general and during pandemic and they have started to reduce the discrimination and segregation of people with disabilities in institutions and at home. 
  • The cooperation between adult training organisations and arts and culture businesses shall lead to reinforcement of creativity in non-formal and formal education. New skills and competences are created in both sectors. 
  • The involved arts, culture and creative industry will find new business and job opportunities together with people with disabilities. 
  • People with disabilities get a chance to work as artists and in the cultural sector.

The main task of the Hungarian partner (the People First Association)
is the dissemination, and the social media, plus create marketing plan and the project’s message to society.
In addition, final conference in Pécs and the transnational theatre play will be organized by People First, as well as the blended mobility training with trainees.
The dissemination activities means providing quality information to the target audience from the beginning, especially in social media.
Networking, a partnership that connects participants in the arts and culture sectors, people with disabilities, human rights organisations and the social/creative economy, is also led by People First.
We will work together with several local NGO’s active in the arts to implement the project.

You can follow the news of the project here:
WEB: https://artcoworkers.eu/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Artcoworkers-104689898685507

The International Cooperation Platform is available here:
https://artcoworkers-platform.eu/

Report on the international closing conference of the project, we held in Pécs in March 2023:
PécsTV News