People with disabilities starting their business

The project aims is activating people with disabilities through self-employment – starting their own business. The project participants are setting up their business and during the first year of its existing they can count on the support in form of training, consulting and financial support: for investment and financing monthly mandatory contributions to social and health insurance.

Target group: 35 persons with disabilities (all grades) aged 18-64 years in from the Lodz region.

Partner ACTIVATION Foundation, Lodz Regional Agency for Development

We want to present a good practice: support blind person in starting his economic activity. One of the recipients of this action is Mr. Tomasz Szczepanski, who plans to set up a business as a masseur in the city of Wielun (about 25 thousand. Inhabitants) in the Lodz province. Mr. Thomas went through a two-stage recruitment:

  1. by submitting an application form, in which he described his idea for a business;
  2. then he participated in interviews with a professional business counselor and psychologist.

After qualifying for the project he started participation in training and consulting. Mr. Thomas used the: individual career counseling (creation of the Individual Action Programme) and workshop on social skills (coping with stress). The second block under the name “Be enterprising”, during which he gained knowledge on running own business, legal, financial, preparation of business, customer acquisition etc.

As the most useful Mr. Thomas stated: individual counseling and workshops on coping with stress.

Recommendations for other organizations / institutions that are interested in conducting similar projects:

  • to provide a blind person an assistant (accompany person), at least in the first stage of the project;
  • providing accessible training materials for a blind person and use of modern technology – implementation of training in the form of webinars;
  • provide individual counseling in the area of business that gives a lot of tips to prepare a business plan;
  • provide active training methods that engage participants to work during the training – eg. joint fulfillment business plans and feedback from the trainer;
  • emphasis on planning for the future, thinking about how a company can operate in a few years.

For more information, please contact:

Logo Fundacja AktywizacjaAnna Pilawska
Project Manager

Fundacja Aktywizacja
Centrum Edukacji i Aktywizacji Zawodowej Osób Niepełnosprawnych
90-019 Łódź, ul. Dowborczyków 30/34, IIp.

tel. + 48 42 237 55 20, + 48 508 501 410

anna.pilawska@idn.org.pl