Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Signs For Europe (A new social business model for Europe to promote the integration of deaf people in the professional market)

Teaser

There are 1 million of deaf Europeans, suffering from an average 50% unemployment rate and 21,1% of which is at risk of poverty. The limited access to employment is the result of the insensitivity to their learning needs in the current educational system, which does not...

Summary

There are 1 million of deaf Europeans, suffering from an average 50% unemployment rate and 21,1% of which is at risk of poverty. The limited access to employment is the result of the insensitivity to their learning needs in the current educational system, which does not provide them with quality or consistent education in sign language. They usually finish their compulsory schooling with diminished chances at a qualified job and a professional career. Current job skills courses given by different private or public institutions do not use teaching methods and materials that are adapted to their learning needs.
During our 14 years of experience in deafness and sign language education, we have developed an effective educational system for deaf people to raise their employment chances: job skills courses taught by qualified teachers fluent in sign language and specialized professional training developed in partnership with employers. Our system also includes bespoke training material, remote access and deaf-centred didactic approaches. Up to 70% of our students finds a long-time qualified job.
With Signs for Europe, we aim at replicating throughout Europe our successful business model by making it into a social franchise. We will invest 2 M€ to standardize our didactic concepts and materials, define the processes needed to run the franchise, set the necessary IT platforms to train the franchisees in our unique concept and gather all the information in a Franchise Handbook that will be handed over as part of the franchise deal. The final approach will be tested with 2 pilot experiences in Germany.
In 5 years, Signs for Europe will help 39.200 deaf Europeans to find a long-term job. Our unique approach will allow governments in our target markets to save 863 M€ in unemployment subsidies. equalizent will grow hiring 11 new people and earning 4 M€ in profits as we expand our business internationally.

Work performed

A Franchise Handbook is finalized within the Signs for Europe project. This franchise handbook is linked with the franchise contract (concluded between the franchisor and the franchisee). It describes the whole equalizent franchise system. The major components are: The success model of equalizent and the philosophy of equalizent, the market and the underlying business model, the courses, the profiles of a potential franchisee, structure and services of the social franchise headquarter, the structure and infrastructure of a competence centre (established from a franchisee), controlling, benchmarking and quality standards, communication principles, PR and Marketing approach including IPR. The rights and duties of the franchisor and the franchisees are defined.
The didactic concepts and training materials used in equalizent so far are reviewed, revised and standardized. The franchisee get detailed descriptions of the structure, content and curricula’s of all ten courses in the franchise system. The didactic concepts are described, for the training materials instructions are written. Both are linked with the courses and special training situations (e.g. conflicts). The trainers of the franchisees can easily search and find required material.
A professional franchise collaboration tool is set up to support this search with the extensive number of instructions and materials (over 2.000 pages).
Special eLearnings based on the idea of gamification are developed. These eLearnings offers deaf people a new level of learning languages. Why? Over the years, trainers at equalizent discovered that basic language learners were struggling at learning new vocabulary and grammar at home or anywhere else but at the training centre itself. There were many online tools to learn any kind of language for hearing people, but no access for deaf learners. Everything was based on words (verbal and written) and on pictures at most. Explanatory videos had subtitles, but they were pretty poor most of the time. That’s how equalizent decided to produce barrier-free eLearning herself. Barrier-free means, that access is easy even for basic learners, which implies that:
• Sign Language has to be the primary language with German as a second language (this suggests that a huge volume of videos was produced for that purpose within the Signs for Europe project).
• To guarantee barrier-free access to basic language learners it is essential that the beginners’ content is covered by Sign Language videos and pictures. In a further step, words can be provided. This is a crucial point, as visual access for deaf learners is the only barrier-free way to learn new vocabulary at the beginning. At a higher level it turns out difficult to capture every new word or sign in a picture so at certain levels, less to no pictures are used but signed videos and written words.
• The design of the eLearnings is barrier-free.
CI, PR and Marketing: the CI for the franchise system (e.g. colours, logos) designed, templates based on these CI are worked out (e.g. business cards, letters). A social media appearance is already started.
A homepage that belongs to potential franchisees is designed and online (https://www.equalizent.eu/en-EU/landing)

Final results

As the Signs for Europe project is to build up and establish a social franchise system the socio-economic impact is part of the project is-self. It is part of the overall objectives and and the results. They are summarized here:
• In 5 years, Signs for Europe project will help 39.200 deaf Europeans to find a long-term job.
• Governments in our target markets will save 863 M€ in unemployment subsidies.
• Around 300 qualified jobs for deaf people as trainings leads and trainers among around 40 franchisees and the franchise headquarter are accomplished.
• Barrier free learning for deaf people come to the next level.

Website & more info

More info: https://www.equalizent.eu/en-EU/landing.