On March the 4th our Italian partner, the Cooperativa Sociale Kara Bobowski, held the final event of the project SuperM.A.N (Supermarkets Meet Accessibility Needs) in the beautiful Forlì.
SUPER M.A.N aims at analysing the field of accessibility for mentally disabled people. The problems to tackle are cognitive and psychic difficulties and the barriers are more relational and cultural than architectonic. Considering the specific needs of mentally disabled people, the project aims to design and implement actions to allow them a fully social inclusion. In 2007 in France, some supermarkets implement training courses for their staff in order to make supermarkets accessible places for mentally disabled people. SUPER M.A.N goal is to import the good practice developed in France to Italy and Germany.
The project aims to promote mentally disabled people in accordance with the European priority of promoting inclusion and equality combating discrimination based on disability.
So…three months after the training, the Italian participants met again to talk about their experience and evaluate the development of their competences with LEVEL5. During the training they started a learning diary to keep track of their development, while on the day of the final event they filled in a self-evaluation questionnaire and went through a tandem evaluation with one of their colleagues. Soon they will get their LEVEL5 certificates!
The whole event was a success and the participants expressed their great satisfaction. We now hope that this initiative will be brought to other supermarkets and new employees will be trained to become “supermen”!
The next phases of the project will take place in Germany..stay tuned!
EP