Short description: Overall objective: to advance institutional capacities and instruments tackling crucial national employment challenges by creating innovative Disability Employment Platform (DEP) for effective linking of all relevant institutions and stakeholders thought exchange of good practices and critically important skill building enabling inclusion of people with disabilities into labor market. Project consist of three types of activities which will contribute to the straightening of the institutional capacities and instruments. The first group of activities implies the implementation of raising awareness, disseminating information and promoting the debate about employment challenges’ activities. Second activity refers to exchanging good practice and experience between EU and Serbia in order to improve awareness and knowledge for better understanding the EU experience in this field. The third group of activities contribute to the creation of institutional framework for the implementation of national reform programs and policies in the disability employment sector. Within this group of activities there will be established the Disability Employment Platform (DEP) - an innovated platform to be coordinated by the national disability employment committee (NDEC). The aim of this activity is to promote the democratic dialogue and connect all relevant local actors by clearly defined mechanisms provide the concrete action in areas affecting employment of PWD.

  Achieved results: Results and key findings of the project have a huge impact on identified target groups and will serve as sustainable mechanisms for disability employment improvement. More than hundred participants from different sectors took part in regional seminars and raised awareness and knowledge about EU and national employment policies. Representatives of all sectors adopted necessary knowledge and information about European Employment Strategy and proposed priority actions within stated target groups. One of the key results of the project is creation of the Disability Employment Platform which gathers key stakeholders from public, private and civil sectors. The Platform provided guidelines and mechanisms for cooperation and increased employment rate of persons with disabilities. Regarding the institutional issues, key results and findings are related to the knowledge and capacity improvement of the National Employment Service representatives. 35 officials were educated and 9 professional job advisors of NES were fully trained for the process of work rehabilitation and counselling for retraining. This result has additional impact on National Employment Service capacities (Sector for PWD Employment and Rehabilitation). Additionally to institutional capacity building results, National Disability Employment Committee (NEDC) was established as a body for coordination of Platform development.

Comment: Project is being implemented by the NES Centre for professional rehabilitation and employment of persons with disabilities in partnership with Youth with Disabilities Forum and Papilot International D.O.O. Slovenia.