June 22, 2007:
Reflection Session
Training Report - Vocational Rehabilitation Course 2007

Ten participants discussed on "How to promote employment of persons with disabilities in their home countries" and submitted the following report.

Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment Creation of PWDs
JICA Tokyo, 15 May - 30 June 2007

Report of the Reflection Session

We started our session by talking about how to promote employment for PWDs in our countries. In this regard all of us felt that to start with it is very important to collect and maintain data on PWDs in our respective countries. So we all felt that it is important to collect information on the types of disability and socio-economic status of PWDs. There were differences of opinion on how to go bout collecting data - start big or start small. All of us recognized the difficulties in collecting good quality data and the cost involved in this. Since our discussion was just focusing on this issue for a long period we were lead to go on to discuss how we can promote employment of PWDs in our countries using the knowledge from this training.

It was highlighted that in Sri Lanka there are no big companies or open labour market as in Japan. So based on the knowledge we received it is possible to create networks with small companies to promote employment of PWDs. And it was also highlighted that self employment can be promoted among the PWDs by providing vocational training for them. It was also noted that Japan Sun Industries (JSI) was initially started as a small workshop.

One participant stressed the importance of collecting data of employers as well to see if they are willing to take PWDs as employees. And if so PWDs can be trained to match with the type of employment offered at those companies. The participant also noted the difficulty with promoting employment for people with intellectual disabilities rather than PWDs with physical disabilities. So it would be better to start off with we should be thinking about promoting employment of PWDs with physical disabilities.

The participant from Sri Lanka shared information on how they conducted a very successful job matching fair by inviting PWDs who have completed vocational training at the Department of Social Services and employers. During this fair employers came with information on their vacancies and interviewed PWDs and selected PWDs for their jobs. Out of the 87 PWDs who attended this fair 56 were employed. And it was interesting to learn that employers requested for such a fair but unfortunately the Department of Social Services did not have information of PWDs trained (or maybe did not have trained PWDs). Most of the participants liked this idea.

A participant noted that if all of us are from the government side it would have been easy to take measures to promote employment of PWDs. But another participant noted that even NGOs can advocate and pressure governments to take such measures.

One participant also noted that because employers and the general public do not understand the abilities of PWDs as employees that it would be very useful to provide such information using flyers and the media etc.

It was also noted that most of us had the understanding that PWDs with intellectual disability cannot be employed. However after the training we all believe in the employability of PWDs with intellectual disabilities.

One participant also highlighted that many NGOs conduct training for lots of PWDs but they forget about the ex-trainees when they complete the courses. For these ex-trainees it is important to have support services like job coaches/trial employment opportunities for them to be successfully employed after the trainings.

Some participants noted that some of the NGOs in their countries have good data collection on PWDs and employers by a voluntary registration process.

We were also told that some prominent universities like University of Tokyo is hiring PWDs with intellectually disabilities for cleaning.

One participant highlighted the importance of using PWD role models in educating the public on promotion of employment for PWDs. Some noted that it is hard to advocate when you do not have role models.

The importance of all of us communicating/networking after we go back on the developments in our countries and helping each other to effectively promote employment of PWDs was also noted.

As the situation of each of our countries is different self advocacy is a very important and a useful method in promoting employment of PWDs.

All of us found that this training course to be extremely useful and some of it very applicable to our own countries. And this experience has opened our eyes to the possibilities available for us to work in our countries to promote the rights of PWDs.