Successes and areas for improvement following initial interventions with persons with disabilities

Project Background:

Fueling Opportunities to end Unemployment for Nepalis with Disabilities (FOUND) project aims to reduce the disability employment gap in Nepal substantially by improving employability skills and self-confidence of persons with disabilities, pilot inclusive job search and hiring practices of employers by improving their knowledge and confidence and collate evidence of what works. It is a collaborative effort of The Leprosy Mission Nepal (TLMN), Federation of Nepalese Chamber of Commerce and Industries (FNCCI), and National Federation of Disabled-Nepal (NFDN). The project works in the five economic hub districts of Nepal – Morang, Kathmandu, Lalitpur, Rupandehi, and Kapilvastu to find and thrive in formal or self-employment.

 

The key objectives of the project are:

1. Employers’ increased understanding of disability
2. Increased skills and understandings of people with disability to gain employment and succeed in chosen occupations
3. Entry and retention of people with disability into formal or self-employment
4. Generate Robust evidence of what works in supporting people with disability to enter and thrive in formal and self-employment in Nepal

 

People with disability TouchPoint:

 

During the course of two years FOUND project has implemented many approaches to reach beneficiaries such as collaboration with the Organization of People with Disabilities (OPD), requesting People with disability database maintained by the local government, Social media promotion, participate in disability events organized by like-minded organizations, visit disability colonies, word of mouth and referral of Persons with disabilities by enrolled beneficiaries and mass SMS. FOUND seeks forums in different events organized for Persons with disabilities to introduce FOUND project and its objectives so that the persons with disabilities unaware of the project are interested to know more about the project. Among all these methods, word of mouth and referral of Persons with disabilities by our beneficiaries has been the effective way to reach the appropriate persons with disabilities. 

   

 

During the initial intervention, the preliminary assessment survey and distance traveled tools are administered to persons with disabilities when demand and supply match up, and the chances of recruitment are apparent. The main priority of the FOUND team during the assessment and review process is to identify

1. The eagerness of the persons with disabilities to obtain and remain job.
2. The confidence of the persons with disabilities.
3. The existing skills of the persons with disabilities and their distance from the job market.
4. The reliability of the information they have shared with the team.
5. Attitude and acceptance of the persons with disabilities toward employers, persons without disability, and any others who have different world views and backgrounds.

 

If the chances of demand and supply matching are very nominal, Business Development Officers (BDO) investigate the database of persons with disabilities to shortlist the candidates who could be suitable for different types and levels of training and capacity enhancement packages. The process is supported by Employment Counselors (EC). The initial interventions sometimes require career counseling and persuading persons with disabilities to choose the right career option however, the FOUND team attempts to match the interest and career path as much as possible to ensure the sustainability of persons with disabilities in the employment.

 

Challenges of Persons with disabilities intervention:

 

• Field Mobilization: The initial intervention and enrollment process is highly affected by the repeatedly gushing wave of COVID-19. The no. of face-to-face meetings and follow-ups are highly impacted.  In the last 2 years, FOUND field staff were often confined to very limited locations due to lockdowns and vehicle restrictions.  

 

• Geographically scattered Persons with disabilities: In the districts like Rupandehi, Kapilvastu, and Morang, the residential neighborhoods and the office and factories areas are scattered and far from each other. Since lots of educated and competitive persons with disabilities have moved to the capital city of Nepal, the team is forced to go outside the periphery of working districts. Due to geographical topology, some nearest remote locations take a whole day of travel. Due to the geographical issues, lack of persons with disabilities in urban areas and the obligation to reach the project target, the team is forced to enroll persons with disabilities living in remote, scattered, and outside peripheral areas for self-employment. Consequently, traveling to those locations for persons with disabilities identification, assessment, intervention, and monitoring remained a big hassle, and more specifically during the COVID-19 restriction period.

 

• Career guidance capacity of cluster staff: In the last 2 years, the FOUND team has gained ample experience in confronting persons with disabilities from various walks of life, temperament, interest, and aptitude. Lots of enrolled persons with disabilities have plenty of skills and qualifications that are not appropriate for the job market. With the inadequate saleable skills of persons with disabilities, the FOUND team is not able to run a supply-driven approach. Meanwhile, based on the market demand and the type of currently available position, the team is forced to lead the persons with disabilities toward available jobs in spite of their interest in different fields of work. While convincing and counseling persons with disabilities to work in the unwanted job is already a challenge, the career guidance skill of field staff who are expected to merely link employers and persons with disabilities is another major initial intervention challenge arisen in the project.    

 

• Job Matching Meeting: During and post COVID-19 phase, despite the immense need for job and skill matching practice, fewer discussions among the team members in this regard has been a major issue. Instead of team discussion, most of the time team members are found to have individually scanned the database to identify right candidates for the available positions resulting to the increased risk of picking appropriate candidates for the available jobs. The huge pressure of reaching project target within two remaining years have made the team members quickly jump into the decision of job or skills enhancement support without subtle analysis of persons with disabilities and job and skill matching exercise subsequently causing high risk of dropout chances during training or after job placement (includes resigning or abrupt termination).

 

• Job Quitting and Termination: The job quitting and termination is not the component of initial intervention phase however past experiences of self or other persons with disabilities hugely affect the attitude of project enrolled persons with disabilities toward employers. Most of the reported job quitting and termination has happened due to following reasons.

1. Lack of enough capacity as expected by employers
2. Low self-esteem after joining the employment
3. Lack of interest of beneficiary to continue job due to the gap of skill vs. interest
4. Lack of interest of employer to invest in reasonable accommodation for persons with disabilities
5. Late reporting at work and frequent breaks required by Persons with disabilities due to their conditions
6. Attitude of colleagues and employers at workplace
7. Lack of employers’ interest toward persons with disabilities due to their focus toward right based attitude at workplace.
8. Lack of in-depth assessment and observation skills of FOUND staffs who are mostly engaged in general exchange of idea, motivation, rapport building and moderate in linking employer and persons with disabilities.

 

• Lack of required skills and experiences: Based on the experience of FOUND staffs who are working very closely with persons with disabilities, large no. of persons with disabilities are academically less qualified or are highly qualified in less demanding discipline and have no market suited skills.

 

• Lack of welcoming environment at workplace: The work environment in corporate, hospitality and assembly line demand equal efficiency of all staffs to maintain the pace of whole team. The work allocated for the day must be completed on the same day. This requires competitive working attitude. Very few persons with disabilities are qualified or show resilience during probation phase. Upon discussion with FOUND team, it is understood that one of the core reasons of people with disability having less resilience at workplace often resulting high tendency of job quit is due to isolation and lack of peer (with disability) support. Persons with disabilities hardly have peer to look up to their perseverance to stick in job.

 

Key Successes:

 

• Learning by doing: The FOUND project is first of its kind in Nepal. Due to its uniqueness, the FCDO provided flexibility of practicing ideas to building rapport and linking persons with disabilities with employers rather than being strict to tools and methodologies. This has provided immense opportunity to staffs to grow their communication and relationship building ability with employers and especially with persons with various kind of disability with different temperament and aptitude.

 

• Sign Language Interpretation (SLI): After the realization of extensive need of SLI, the recruitment of Sign Language Interpreter was materialized. This has added the value in FOUND project by expanding its scope to reach deaf people. The project learnt that unlike other group of persons with disabilities, the deaf people are tied to their friend circles and passing information to one deaf person makes it easy to circulate same information to other deaf people in the group. This not just helped in reaching out to deaf community but also helped guiding and encouraging them toward employment. The one deaf person with positive attitude would explain and persuade others in the group to stick to their job search process and in the job after recruitment.

 

• Disability Confident Employer Movement Branding: The branding and boosting of DCEM, including circulation of inspirational stories of disability champions, inclusive employers etc through FOUND’s own social media, or others’ reputed social media accounts have helped increase the connectivity with new persons with disabilities. The tragic part is that the project is compelled to eliminate many skilled persons with disabilities who are not in project or periphery districts. However, the handful of beneficiaries enrolled to FOUND through DCEM has very positive attitude and high hope toward the project’s intervention in their lives. The persons with disabilities have increased their ability to wait for appropriate role since they have understood that FOUND is genuinely striving to find appropriate role for them based on their skills and interest.

 

 

• Recommendation of FOUND project by our beneficiaries to other person with disability: The reach to persons with disabilities has increased due to the snowball effect. The recommendation of FOUND project to other persons with disabilities by our beneficiary has helped to the large extend to reach more persons with disabilities.

 

• The Disability Inclusive Job Portal: Although large no. of persons with disabilities are still unaware of the Inclusive Job Portal because of its limited promotion in five working districts, the public registration of persons with disabilities in the portal has slowly increased with its branding through social sites and word of mouth.

 

Areas of Improvement:

 

• Full-fledged career guidance and mentoring in the initial stage of intervention is required to motivate persons with disabilities toward employment rather than just linking them to employers.

 

• The current or future project should contemplate on sensitization campaign in larger scale targeting young persons with disabilities including school going children and motivate them to select diverse academic field to compete in job market.

 

• Counselling to address mental health of persons with disabilities is must because lots of persons with disabilities enrolled in the project tend to have hesitation to join the employment despite being skilful. In some cases, they drop their self-esteem and self-stigmatize even before being exposed to employment market, for example, during vocational training, interview, and on-the-job training period. Many lose their confident after recruitment in workplace.

 

• Discourage persons with disabilities to look into employment world from the lens of disability right based approach. For this, OPDs themselves should be aware of when and why disability rights and employees’ code of conducts has to be viewed in isolation or from comparative perspective. Some persons with disabilities during initial intervention phase come with the mindset that employment is a disability right and they are discarded by employment market to get into this world. It is very important that right of persons with disabilities to acquire job has to be separated from the concept of disability right. The group motivation sessions to persons with disabilities in the presence of both corporate sectors heads, OPDs leaders can be considered to give clear picture of these two concepts.

 

• Partnership with CSOs is required to expand the reach and intensify of DCEM so that the government, private sector, and persons with disabilities themselves are forced to acknowledge the collective effort of social engineers. The attention of these bodies toward disability employment will ease the initial intervention phase as lots of persons with disabilities who are able and willing to enter into the job market will be aware of the FOUND. The career guidance and the process of linking persons with disabilities with employers will be easy especially if they are motivated from early on.

 

• Due to geographical difficulties and a limited staff capacity of FOUND, the team is not able to reach the wider locations within the districts or periphery districts. While enrolment of skilled persons with disabilities is already a challenge, reaching out to a wider geographical region has been inevitable to achieve the target. Therefore, the mobilization of volunteers with disability as peer navigators in the local level could be an innovative idea to reach out to hidden people with disability and those affected by leprosy. The peer navigators will not just support in the initial intervention phase by locating the new persons with disabilities in the community but ensure the supported people are engaged in employment, collect peers’ feedback, and complaints. Likewise, if trained in career guidance and leprosy case finding, these disability champions cannot just motivate employed persons with disabilities to sustain the business but suspect leprosy cases, and support in the safe care practices as well.

 

• The FOUND project is confined to supporting for persons with disabilities which unquestionably indicated that those having disability cards are eligible for enrolment in the project. However, in communities, some persons with minor disability prefer not to take disability cards as there are no or extremely limited benefits and allowances allocated for them. To navigate these people, the Washington group short set questions can be administered and those identified as persons with disabilities can be enrolled into the project.

 

Conclusion:

 

In this document, together with challenges, some major successes, and many areas of improvement especially in the initial intervention phase of people with disability in employment has been realized. To further establish and strengthen a disability-inclusive workplace movement, long-term commitment of persons with disabilities, ongoing intervention with persons with disabilities from school level, inclusive vocational training centers and workplaces, community awareness campaigns, policy-level advocacy by the projects like FOUND should go hand in hand.  

The document is produced based on the discussion with staffs, the learnings generated from the quarterly and annual reports. Overall, the document clearly suggests that despite being a challenging project, there is a great scope for TLMN and likeminded organizations to enter the disability community in Nepalese society through employment as one of the strategic agendas.

 

This learning report was published in April 2022