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In a quiet neighborhood of Warsaw, Danuta stands at the door of the organization where she works as a senior ICT trainer. The first time she entered this very same door, almost ten years ago, she was as a trainee. Since that time she has overcome unemployment, dependency, and lack of motivation and self-esteem. She has made her life more socially and economically productive. Today she helps others that, like herself, felt ill and became disabled after having a career and professional life.
As a trainer for the Foundation Supporting Physically Disabled Mathematicians and IT specialists (FPMiINR, its Polish acronym), Danuta helps disabled people to get back to the employment path. Promoting the values of professionalism, self-respect, and “active minds”, Danuta, together with the other trainers and the FPMilNR staff, work relentlessly to combat the “culture of unemployment.” A culture especially pervasive among older people with disabilities who, for most of their lives, were denied education and work opportunities — even when they were capable of having a “normal” professional life.
FPMiINR was created in 1990 as an initiative of the Polish Academy of Science to improve the technical IT knowledge of scientists with disabilities. As the initiative matured, the Foundation realized that the demand in the labor market for scientists was high; it broadened the scope of the program to reach disabled people generally.
Today, the Foundation offers a comprehensive approach to employability, providing psychological and legal counseling, job search assistance, links to employers, ICT training and business development workshops. FPMilNR operates two Warsaw community technology centers (CTCs). Forty regional rural centers are being rolled out in partnership with entities such as the European Union, Microsoft, ECORYS, and the Polish Ministry of Education.
Family support and a spark of self-esteem: the right start
Seventeen years ago, Danuta fell sick to a severe form of rheumatism after she gave birth to her son. During her time as a teacher she also completed a bachelor’s degree in education; working during the week and studying in the weekends at the University of Warsaw. After the diagnosis Danuta lost her job, of 13 years, as a teacher. “The disease is very painful, everything hurts and sometimes the pain makes walking very hard. When I was diagnosed with rheumatism it was a shock for me, it changed everything in my life. I lost motivation. I lost even my self-esteem.”
For four years, Danuta endured the disease without a job. With two-years of maternity leave and vacation time she had accumulated, Danuta provided temporary income for her family. But her dreams of returning to teaching ended when the government ruled that, due to her illness, she couldn’t perform with excellence in her job. “They scratched me for life. The government denied me the opportunity to get back to my job after all those years of experience and devotion… I didn’t know what to do. I felt lost. But I never lost the support of my family. Their support kept my dreams alive.”
According to trainers and beneficiaries at FPMilNR, widespread misperceptions prevail about people with disabilities. In Polish society, they are not considered capable of having an active, professional life.
Overprotective families stymie self-esteem and feed the perception that people with disabilities are incapable of living independently. Employers perceive that people with disablities can only perform certain tasks, limiting career-path opportunities and leading to low-skilled, low-paid and unrewarding jobs.
Danuta’s family didn’t believe these myths. Through steady, loving support and specialized treatment at a rehabilitation center, Danuta rediscovered herself. “Something happened in the way I perceived myself and what I could accomplish with the new way of life that the disease had brought to me. During my time at the center, the perspective of how I looked at disabled people was totally transformed.”
Previous doctors she had visited gave her no hope for her condition. The opportunity to spend time with other disabled people in a non-hospital environment changed her perceptions about them and herself. “I saw other people who had a very normal function in their life. When I compared myself to other people in the rehabilitation center that suffered from conditions much harder than mine, I realized that I wasn’t in such bad shape. It made me appreciate myself. I felt an outburst of self-esteem, discovering new possibilities for the future with my family and my job.”
The learning experience at the rehabilitation center provided the right ingredients for Danuta to accept her situation, without feeling useless or a burden on her family. “There was a person in a wheel chair with a condition so severe that she couldn’t even eat her soup without assistance. I helped this person eat her food and suddenly I realized that I could help somebody, that I was useful and needed. In this precise moment and after all those years of emotional stress I came to accept my condition and to appreciate myself”. This moment of self-discovery triggered a chain reaction that brought Danuta to the FPMilNR for her first ICT course.
Personal motivation and ICT skills training
Once Danuta regained self-confidence, she started to look for retraining alternatives, to learn new skills that would allow her to apply for jobs outside the government educational system. When her son started primary school, she became involved in his school activities and education at home. “I got involved with my son, for my son,” she proudly says. His interest in computers inspired Danuta to seek out computer classes. “I felt I needed to learn more about computers. He was so young and knew so much about them compared to me. His interest encouraged me to look for basic courses. Through a friend I heard about the work of FPMilNR and that’s how I got here for my first computer class.”
Coming to FPMilNR opened a new chapter in Danuta’s life. She took several ICT courses before being recruited as a full-time trainer. “As a teacher, I really liked to learn new things. I felt motivated to challenge myself with new knowledge, with new skills. When I finished my courses, the job proposal was a very valued price for my effort. After all those years suffering, I finally realized that I was needed that I could help other people in a situation similar to mine. That could become, hopefully, an inspiration for people who found themselves in a difficult juncture of their lives. People who feel lost and need a spark of hope, just like I did seven years ago.”
Today, Danuta is a senior ICT trainer at FPMilNR. She teaches basic and advanced skills and specialized courses, such as e-skills for civil servants. Her motivation, FPMilNR’s training approach and the inclusive social environment it promotes were the necessary ingredients for her re-entry into the labor market. “Personal motivation and willingness to accept new challenges are key,” she firmly states. “The lectures are hard and we put the responsibility for learning on the trainees. This promotes self-confidence and professionalism. The quality of education here at FPMilNR is very high and the courses are long and intense.”
For organizations working with people with disabilities, like the Foundation, the key is to help their beneficiaries find and tap their own motivations. Discovering their potential, recognizing their different learning needs, and envisioning their professional and personal goals can become the most important catalyst to get them back to the employment path. From the employers’ perspective this is very appealing; they trust the quality of the training and value the pool of future employees that are highly qualified and ready to pursue a professional path.
The motivation differs for people that didn’t have a productive professional life before they acquired their disability. These people have lived under the “culture of unemployment” all their lives. According to Danuta, this subtle but important difference must be taken into account when designing training programs with employability goals.
She says FPMilNR has two general groups of beneficiaries enrolled in the training programs. The first group is the long-term unemployed that are not actively seeking work and rarely finish their courses. For them, training represents a bridge to a social network to inclusion. They meet friends and participate in events. Some of these individuals, Danuta expresses with a sense of disappointment, “are shocked when we push them to the next level, when we challenge them with difficult computer-related tasks. They think that they come here to play with computers. Our trainings are really hard work.”
The second group is comprised of people like Danuta, who were professionally successful before loosing their job to an illness. For example, Maciej was an art curator in a museum before becoming ill and loosing his job. Katarzyna was a classical cello artist. The stories go on and on. They respond differently to challenges; their expectations for the training are very high. “They expect other people to treat them seriously and professionally,” an employment counselor explains. “They come here to learn new skills, to find a job or to be able to keep their current jobs.” Most trainees at FPMiINR belong to this group. “Our best promotion campaign is the high quality and professionalism of our beneficiaries. I endorse these values that FPMilNR promotes with pride,” says Danuta.
Changing perceptions among employers
Changing the employer perceptions is not easy. FPMiINR uses a two-pronged strategy: promoting skills and professionalism among its trainees and actively lobbying employers to change their perceptions and corresponding job opportunities.
FPMilNR actively educates companies about the benefits from hiring qualified employees with disabilities, demonstrating their so-called “disabilities” do not impede their performance. It is not enough to recruit employers, it is also necessary to change the perception of the types of jobs that people with disabilities can do. As one of the trainees explained, “I don’t want any job, I want a challenging and rewarding one”.
Employer attitudes will not change unless Foundation trainees deliver in the workplace. FPMiINR promotes a culture of professionalism and “active minds,” as one of the counselors described it. The goal is to get people into positions where they can succeed outside their usual boundaries. For many, especially older trainees, it is not uncommon to think that they don’t have the right to work. FPMilNR constantly reminds people of their right to work. The thorough, challenging training programs, such as the European Computer Driver License (ECDL) which is 140 class hours, is imbued with the values of professionalism and having a good, worthwhile job. As one trainee stated, “I don’t want special training or special treatment, I want specialized training that allows me to challenge myself, that inspires me to get to the next level. I don’t want to feel ‘special’ I want to feel specialized.”
FPMilNR is taking this to the next level by developing a network of regional distance learning CTCs, called e-Centrum. This initiative will offer training to the general population. People with disabilities, some of the most experienced foundation trainers, will labor without physical impediment. In this way, actions will fight the misperceptions of what the “disabled” can achieve. Training for the general population will also create new revenue for FPMilNR to subsidize training for people with disabilities.
Capitalizing on Poland’s economic transformation
Two transformations are crucial to the role of ICT skills in Poland’s labor market: 1) the shrinking industrial and agricultural sectors, accompanied by rapid growth in services, and 2) decreasing unemployment tied to the wave of educated Polish migrants leaving for other EU countries. Justyna Muranowicz, a project manager for Microsoft Community Affairs in Poland, summarized the shift: “bargaining power between employer and employee has changed due to the increasing need for highly-qualified individuals.”
In this context, ICT skills and a shortage of skilled labor is forcing employers to reconsider their biases. Service sector jobs suit many people with physical disabilities, since they lower requirements for workers to be physically present in an office (e.g. telework, web design, data bases programming).
Qualified employees are in such in demand that employers offer good salaries and benefits to attract skilled labor, including people with disabilities. Although prejudice is still pervasive in the business culture, economic forces are helping change the perceptions of what disabled people can achieve professionally.
Many factors influence the labor market, but there seems to be momentum to increase participation among people with disabilities in Poland and other EU countries. The work of organizations like FPMilNR is helping to take advantage of these transformations. Danuta is one example among many of how ICT training can help people with disabilities become active and productive members of society, a growing information society.
Recommended citation
Garrido, M. (2008). Personal motivation and ICT skills training: Jobs for people with disabilities in Poland. Seattle: Technology & Social Change Group, University of Washington Information School.