Solutions developed and experiences learnt will be used by CDSK and ADDA to place 100 youths with mental and intellectual disabilities in training and employment.
Through this grant, we want to:
- Demonstrate specific pre-placement and placement requirement needs for mental and intellectual disabilities when accessing training and employment
- Demonstrate that youths with mental and intellectual disabilities can and do work when given the right pre-placement and post-placement support
- Demonstrate innovations that exploit the higher dependency between youths with intellectual disabilities and their caregivers to improve the quality of care and livelihoods for the youths and their families
- Increase access to employment and job retention for Youths with Mental Disability
- Co-design inclusive learning spaces, tools and workspaces that increase the knowledge of employers on mental disability
- Co-Design and prototype pre-placement and placement models that improve skills acquisition and quality of care for youths with a disability before and during training
Project Objective
To bring together a diverse team of experts from multiple sectors to co-design, prototype, test and document training and employment models for youths with mental and intellectual disabilities in Nairobi County.
Project Approaches
This project will use the social lab approach to co-design and develop solutions for placing youths with mental and intellectual disabilities in training and employment. Social problems are complex because situations change faster than a plan. Moreover, in social problems, there are too many moving parts and so many different players that are both part of the problem and part of the solution. The social lab approach brings onboard group dynamics and group psychology, complexity theory, design thinking and visualization. The impact of this innovation lies in the number of successful models developed to increase access to training and employment opportunities for youths with mental and intellectual disabilities.
