"For an independent life" is a three-year project, co-financed by AICS, launched in 2023 by the lead body AIFO (Italian Association of Friends of Raoul Follereau), together with several partners, including COPE which is following up on its commitment in Tunisia. Other project partners are: S.c.r.l. – Educational and scientific services for the University of Florence, Action Research Laboratory for CO development, (ARCO-PIN), and in Tunisia the Ministry of Social Affairs, represented by the General Committee for Social Promotion - CGPS.
The project is carried out in 4 Tunisian governorates: Tunis, El Kef, Kasserine and Medenine where in 2021, it was found that less than 1% of young people and adults (aged between 16 and 34) with disabilities take advantage of the courses offered by the Vocational Training Centers, compared to 70% of their peers without disabilities.
The general objective is to ensure quality, equitable and inclusive education, and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all; inclusive education is an essential tool for the social inclusion of vulnerable groups of the population, as described in the Three-Year Programming and Direction Document (2019-2021) of AICS.
The Specific Objective (in line with SDG 4.4 / Target 4.4.) is the improvement of the technical and professional skills of young people and adults with disabilities in the Governorates of Le Kef, Kasserine and Medenine in order to facilitate their entry into employment and entrepreneurship.
The identified needs lead back to a single cause: the limited access of people with disabilities to existing training opportunities, determined in turn by the poor accessibility of the latter. Although entrepreneurs and CSOs have highlighted their knowledge of the rules that encourage the negotiation of protected categories, they believe that the training of PcDs is insufficient to allow their inclusion in the world of work.
The direct beneficiaries of the action will be: trainers and users of the technical professional courses existing in the country (young people and adults with disabilities who will participate in professional training courses); representatives of the Ministry of Labor; representatives of local entrepreneurship; representatives of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and local Organizations of People with Disabilities (OPDs); the users of the planned information campaigns.
The indirect beneficiaries will be the family members of people with disabilities who have participated in the technical and professional courses, the employers who will be able to count on qualified labor.
In the future, all people with disabilities will be able to benefit from it and Tunisian society as a whole, which will finally be able to capitalize on the abilities of a significant portion of its population whose potential cannot currently be expressed due to barriers in the education system.
