One Page Summary

Our proposal aims at responding to NOV START EOOD challenge by offering a psycho-educational, evidence-based service model addressed to children, youngsters and young adults with special educational needs, proven to be functional to help this target beneficiaries acquiring personal, life and vocational fundamental autonomies, in order to allow them to enter the labor market and live an autonomous and quality life. Also, TICE Social Cooperative intends to offer NOV START EOOD educators and professionals the necessary management support and supervision to launch this specialized service as a start up activity to be developed.
The service proposed, projected and managed by TICE Social Cooperative, is based on an educational model focused on innovative teaching techniques addressed to kids and youngster with cognitive impairments or severe disabilities. The educational model aims at acquiring and developing basic, personal and lifelong autonomies. Our service is then perfectly adequate to respond to NOV START EOOD social challenge. The proposal aims at developing a tailored project which will consider the specificity of the local territory of Ruse (Bulgaria), by offering an educational evidence-based model, technical tools and expertise, supervision and training to start an innovative educational centre which will respond to the critical necessity to the target population in that area.
According to the clinical and cognitive condition of each beneficiary, our model focuses on 4 educational areas:
- Area 1) Basic autonomies : self nutrition and and personal autonomies (eating solid food, diet varying, use of cutlery, cutting food with a knife, etc.); regulated sleep (sleeping schedule, ability to fall asleep by themselves, sleeping in their own bed, etc.); sphincter control (day and night); dressing up – undressing (taking off zipped shirts, buttoned pants), self cleaning.
- Area 2) Personal advanced autonomies : nutrition (preparing simple snacks, mixing ingredients, following a recipe, preparing a meal etc.); self-care and personal hygiene (taking a shower, keeping hair and nails clean and tidy, epilation/shaving); getting dressed (choosing the right clothes for the right external temperature); Indoor housekeeping activities (setting/clearing the table, taking out the trash, sweeping, making the bed, washing clothes etc.); outdoor housekeeping (raking some leaves, planting flowers, car washing, etc.)
- Area 3) Social autonomies: community life (answering/making a call, telling time on the clock, getting a bus/use of publis transport, ordering a meal, going to the barber shop, ordering a book to the library).
- Area 4) Entering the labour market: This area is dedicated to building a connection between the necessities of the service users (youngster with special needs) and the local economy. The educational support, through which different kind of users benefit from the acquisition of fundamental personal and vocational autonomies can be carried to the market labour, with the necessary supervision. The job placement strategy , in favor of the service beneficiaries, will follow a double direction: a) settlement of agreements with local enterprises through a structured valorization and information process on the disability culture, along with a promotion campaign of the project in favor of the hosting enterprises b) identification, with the collaboration of the hosting enterprises, of those working activities which can be undertaken by the disabled person in complete autonomy (right after an adequate training) on the working spot and/or in the educational center, so that to be supervised by his/her educator.
Based on the necessity expressed within the challenge , and in consideration of the specificity of the local community in Ruse, the service approach can be exported and subsequently designed, planned and developed according to the following operational steps:
1) Local study (observation) and preliminary data gathering in Ruse 
2) Transfer of knowledge and technology 
3) Support to launch the Start Up Service in Ruse
A follow up support, up to six months from the start of the project, is also guaranteed in order to evaluate the efficacy of the service in running programs for life autonomies and occupational opportunities for kids, adolescents and young adults.
Our project aims at developing an innovative model which produces services (ideally co-financed by public and private entities), gathers data, supports disabled people and creates job opportunities for the direct beneficiaries and the professionals involved. There are no such training and educational “gyms” in Europe, Ruse might be one of the pioneers in implementing this model of social service.