About

Collaborative Economy without Barriers - CEB

The project is a three year Strategic Partnership for the exchange of good practices among the staff of the five involved organizations - Associazione Uniamoci Onlus (Italy), Diakonisches Werk Bremen e.V. (Germany), CENTRO SOCIAL E PAROQUIAL SANTOS MARTIRES (Portugal), Fundatia Crestina Diakonia Filiala Sfantu Gheorghe (Romania), Association for sustainable development and environmental protection GO GREEN Skopje (Macedonia) – that will allow them to collect a set of tools and approaches able to provide to the disabled users of their inclusive services the skills (self-awareness, entrepreneurship, ICT, communication and know how in specific handcraft or services area) needed to enter and participate to the opportunities offered by the field of collaborative economy.

It raises from three main facts that addressed this consortium members to collect their strengths in order to offer concrete opportunities: the consortium users' with disability expressed in various occasions the need to feel productive in society, to get a job and to be able to satisfy their material needs autonomously; the evidence of the vast outstanding potential of the collaborative economy and the current important role of fair platforms even at EU level; the barriers to collaborative economy for people with disability represented by its mainly ICT based system and by the lack of a dedicated educational path able to direct the people with disability's entrepreneurship toward adequate channels.

CEB wants to lay down the barriers to: Collaborative consumption (Gaining access to goods or services through bartering, renting, lending, trading, leasing, exchanging, reselling and swapping – through the organization of events or the enrollment in existing platforms), Collaborative production (Groups or networks of individuals collaborate to design, produce or distribute goods – through the local and transnational activities in the partner organizations), Collaborative learning (learning experiences that are open to anyone and where people share resources and knowledge to learn together - like the virtual mobilities and the sharing of learned competences and art workshop after each blended mobility with the whole group of the project participants), Collaborative finance (discovering crowd funding opportunities, for example). 

It will be realized through an international path of exchange of good practices, made of:

- a joint training event for 3 educators/occupational therapists/social workers per partner organization

- 5 learning mobilities for 4 learners (adult people with disability and/or with social obstacles) and 2 accompanying persons aiming at acquiring relevant skills about handcrafting, green services and ICT

- common local workshops addressing 15 adult people with disability and/or with social obstacles on the principles of collaborative economy, self-awareness, enrolment in on-line platforms, communication and safety.

The implementation of the project will be based on a collaborative approach among the partners so each of them will be responsible of specific actions in order to reach the foreseen results for each project activity. The learning process of the adult learners will be mediated by the learning by doing method, the use of easy language, but also the right alternation among learning activities and breaks, a supportive approach and a tutoring system will ensure the efficacy of the learning process and the actual application of the learning outcomes.

Thanks to this educational path, the adult learners of the partner organizations will develop the necessary skills (self-awareness, ICT skills, simple green job skills, communication skills, handcraft and decor skills) to successfully participate and take advantages of collaborative economy networks, extending the fields of social inclusion for people with disability and offering them the opportunity to access the productive system of economy and to gain a transnational view of their possibilities. The involved staff will gain a know-how to be employed in the maintenance of the activities activated by the project. The project consortium, made of organization from different European and countries and beyond, togheter with the wide dissemination strategy of the project method (translated in 3 validated and generalizable products: a publication about the opportunities of collaborative economy in the partners' Countries, guidelines for professionals and a report about how to support people with disability in accessing the collaborative economy opportunities) will create the European scope of the project that could generate the level of attention which motivates all these initiatives to open up for a cultural-sensible dialogue and for various disadvantaged target groups to train themselves to participate in these new forms of economy, to discuss and to define their challenges, achievements and potential usefulness.

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