Persons with disabilities face difficulties traveling, going out and accessing to information. It becomes more visible nowadays, in the world dominated by digital information and new media which leads to digital exclusion. We want to raise awareness among youth with fewer opportunities, their parents, NGO workers about new technologies and tools which make access to digital world easier. By means of trainings, consultations, manuals we will show that everyone is equal in the Internet, spread the knowledge how to educate and communicate the disabled more effectively and efficiently.
Topical focus:
Country:
What locality or neighborhood will your project focus on?
Donetsk
Describe the specific population with whom you will be working.
We will work with youth with fewer opportunities and their parents, teachers and youth workers concerned about this topic. Our organization has collaborated with partner organizations helping disabled people within various activities and projects and our idea found broad response among the target group mentioned above. Everyone understands that rapid development of digital world increases the gap between ordinary people and the disabled. Our aim is to encourage and raise motivation among the target group to take active participation in digital world and therefore have an impact on ordinary world. The disabled are one of the most vulnerable people who have limited access to significant number Internet services. The participants are familiar with computer and Internet usage on a basic level.
Who else will be on your team to help implement the project?
Maya Samarova – project coordinator, NGO “CEC”, fb.com/maya.samarova
Giuseppina Galatioto – volunteer from Italy, a certified teacher, experienced tutor and student mentor: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/rossella-giuseppina-galatioto/
Paweł Stawinoga – volunteer from Poland, trainer, has Master's degree in computer science, fb.com/stafik
Kobysh Nikolai – IT-specialist, trainer – fb.com/nick.kobysh
Elena Smagliy – Head of the Board of NGO “CEC” fb.com/elena.smagliy
What kinds of news, stories and other content will be created?
Participants will create articles in Wikipedia about their organizations learning how to work collaboratively and blog to write notes. They will set up a social network accounts (e.g. Facebook, BKontakte, Twitter) and post new messages on their profiles, add and share interesting contacts and groups where they will follow and take part in discussions there. They will post photos, video clips and podcasts made during the trainings on YouTube and previously mentioned services. Besides a manual made of presentation content and participants’ suggestions will be created and distributed.
What technologies and digital tools do you plan to use in the trainings?
Describe the connections that you or your organization have already established or plan to establish that will contribute to the success of the project.
- Donetsk city youth library www.library.dn.ua/index.php?lang=ua&pp=14 which will provide training room and computers with Internet access.
– Donetsk city youth center dodmc.dn.ua which will provide room for consultations.
– Public organization assisting disabled children and young people with disabilities “RAINBOW” +38 (062) 3345108, contact – Stepanova Tatiana who will consult about training and publication contents.
– Donetsk NGO “Cerebral palsy – with hope for the future. Community assistance to parents and physicians’ +38 (062) 3891761, contact – Shepelyuk Elena, who will consult about training and publication contents.
All the organizations have been already our partners in different projects and they will spread information about the project.
How many participants do you think will be trained in your project?
We plan to create 2 groups per 12 people in each group. There will be young people with disabilities and their parents or youth workers who accompany them. We will contact organizations which work with the disabled, place the announcements in the Internet like social network, websites, spread info to our mailing list.
We admit that there are some people from the target group of the project that have no access to the Internet, so we will hang the posters in public places.
Selected participants will agree to attend the whole training program and take active part in the project. They will be issued a certificate when the course finishes. The trainers will do their best in order to design useful and practical workshops taking into account the needs of the target group.
Describe which technologies, tools, and media you will focus on when training participants.
Several different types of social media will be presented to the participants reflecting their basic features to help disabled people use them to share news, stories and other multimedia. Participants will create articles in Wikipedia. They will set up a social network account (Facebook, BKontakte, Twitter) to post new messages on their profiles and search, add and share interesting contacts and groups where they will follow and take part in discussion. They will work with social media which uses video and voice like podcasts and video logs using platforms such as YouTube. Besides they will get acquainted with applications which assist the disabled to surf the net. Those technologies are already widely used and spread and enable easy contact with the whole world.
Describe the facilities where you will hold the workshops.
The trainings will be held in Donetsk city youth library. There is a training room for 15 people with 8 desktop computers and wi-fi connection (20/15 Mbps) for participants’ notebooks. During the preparation and training activities we will use NGO’s equipment: printer for the handouts and beamer to make presentations.
The consultations will be organized in the organization’s office which offers wi-fi connection (20/15 Mbps) or remotely over Skype.
What is your current relationship with the community with whom you plan to work? What makes you the most appropriate individual or organization to implement this project?
The main target group of our organization is youth so that our aim is to reach, cooperate and help young people by spreading and offering them information about various opportunities like voluntary vacancies, youth projects, foreign language classes. We also want to give people equal chances for development and realization their ideas. Besides we try to involve young people with fewer opportunities into active participation in our community life and show them that they have possibilities to influence on the situation and make positive changes in the country. For this reason 6 people have just started one year long European Voluntary Service in our organization in a project called “Active Citizenship”.
What specific challenges do you expect to face when planning and implementing your project?
Disabled people can experience mobility difficulties while moving out of the place of living so we decided to organize the training with their parents or tutors who assist them. Another type are technical problems concerning computers which we will use in the library or the participants will bring. For this reason two computer science engineers (Paweł i Nikolai) will be always on duty to help the participants and solve all the technical matters.
How will you measure and evaluate the project’s impact, specifically: your primary participants, the wider regional community, or the global digital community?
We want to use web analytic tools to check how many visitors the websites (blogs, social media profiles) that we create will have. Moreover we will organize a contest to encourage the participants to keep up with creating more and more content on their profiles, groups, blogs which they set up during the training. Besides we will ensure that knowledge and results are shared within the digital community through summative evaluations, consultations with parents and mentors responsible for the disabled people. If the participants will keep on using presented social media when the project finishes we can call it successful.
If your project were to be selected as a Rising Voices grantee, what would be the general timeline of project activities in 2014?
May – June – Project promotion in mass media, among the target group, local NGOs. Selection of the participants and designing training content based on their needs.
July – August – 4 trainings and monitoring “home tasks” given to the participants. Working on the manual content based on the training materials. Getting feedback from participants.
September – Publication and distribution of the manual.
October – Announcing a contest for the most successful story.
November – February – Collecting stories of success (how the project influenced on participants’ lives), publishing the results and experience of the participants, placing links to them on the organizers’ website. Fundraising for the participants of the content “The most successful story”.
October – March – consultations for the target group.
March – Reward of the winners “The most successful story”. Official meeting with the participants of the project and getting feedback from them.
April – Compiling a report.
Detail a specific budget of up to $2,500 USD for operating costs.
Equipment for project activities:
1 notebook 400$
1 floor screen 65$
1 cartridge for a printer 30$
Administrative costs:
Paper A4 – 20$
Bank fees 50$
Publishing:
Certificate of participation 0,7$ * 24 copies = 17$
Manuals 2$ * 50copies = 100$
Travel expenses:
Travelling of participants (bus) 1$ * 24 persons * 4 trainings = 96$
Project activities:
Stationary for the trainings 5$ * 24 participants = 120$
Coffee break and luch 4$ * 26 persons * 4 trainings = 416$
Honoraria:
Project coordinator 50$ * 12 months = 600$
IT trainer 40$ * 4 trainings = 160$
IT consultant 20$ * 12 months = 240$
Besides the microgrant funding, what other support can Rising Voices provide for your project to ensure its success?
We would be thankful for consultations with experts, especially in the field of working with disabilities and new technologies to be prepared for workshops as well as possible. It would be very nice to get some promotional materials for the participants. Besides an information on the Rising Voices website that this project received a grant would be very appreciated.
Contact name
Paweł Stawinoga
Organization
Center of European Cooperation