<< Background >>Valakupiai Rehabilitation Centre is initiating the project “Active Inlusion For All 2023”. With this project organization seek to improve qualification of vocational rehabilitation specialists in the fields of vocational trainingproject organization seek to improve qualification of vocational rehabilitation specialists in the fields of vocational training and quality assurance of providing services, to strengthen collaboration and share best practice examples and to adapt the experience in Lithuania.<< Objectives >>We set ourselves goals:- offer and ensure quality services for persons with various disabilities according to their individual needs according to the nature and severity of their disability, including professional skills and soft social skills,- constantly update the methods and methods of providing services, adapt itto the changing needs of service recipients and the labor market,- apply effective digital tools and digital content of appropriate quality in daily work and when organizing distance training,- to enable learners to get involved as actively as possible not only in the learning process, but also in the life of society or the nearest community.<< Implementation >>In cooperation with organizations from Finland, the Netherlands and Spain, 1 week will be organized. long-term visits to professional rehabilitation specialists who work in the fields of professional rehabilitation of persons with disabilities (assessment of professional abilities, professional guidance and counseling, restoration of professional skills or development of new ones (vocational training), employment assistance and support at the workplace) and integration.<< Results >>It is planned to reach these results: organized 3 visits of 1 week duration, 12 vocational rehabilitation specialists will improve their qualification; their knowledge will be assessed by Europass mobility document, the publication about the experience and the knowledge will be prepared too. The experience gained during the visit and the information dissemination will be done with 5 different means on purpose to influence sectorial, national and international levels.

Valakupiai Rehabilitation Centre initiated the project “Empowerment of Vocational Rehabilitation Professionals by Benchlearning between Estonia, Germany and Lithuania” and in cooperation with organizations from Estonia and Germany has organized 2 visits of 1 week duration for vocational rehabilitation specialists who work in the field of integration and vocational rehabilitation for people with disabilities. With this project organizations seek to improve qualification of vocational rehabilitation specialists in the fields of vocational training and quality assurance of providing services, to strengthen collaboration and share best practice examples and to adapt the experience in Lithuania. During the visists were improved the competencies of vocational rehabilitation specialists in the fields of: identification and assessment of people (especially youngsters) with special needs (and vocational guidance), the development of the principles of training programs adapted to persons with different disabilities; the use of techniques of involving new clients/students to participate in vocational rehabilitation; implementing the new practice in the field of vocational rehabilitation services; use of ICT. According to the survey about service users of vocational rehabilitation in Lithuania, the major part of service users are people with physical movement disabilities, people with mental, sensory disabilities participate the least. It is important to expand the target group so that more people can receive vocational rehabilitation services, especially youngsters andthose living in rural areas. Organizations presented their activities, providing vocational training and vocational rehabilitation services, training methods and the ways of integration in vocational training and the labor market.The main results of the project: organized 2 visits of 1 week duration, 12 vocational rehabilitation specialists improved their qualification; their knowledge was certified with Europass mobility document. The experience gained during the visit and the information dissemination will be done with 5 different means on purpose to influence sectorial, national and international levels.Duration of the project: from 01/09/2014 - 30/08/2015.

Valakupiai Rehabilitation Centre has initiated the project “PRO - Improvement of Vocational Rehabilitation Services for People with Mental and Motor Disorders” and in cooperation with other organizations from Italy and Spain has organized 2 visits each of 1 week duration for vocational rehabilitation specialists who work in the field of integration and vocational rehabilitation for people with disabilities. With this project Valakupiai Rehabilitation Centre seek to improve qualification of vocational rehabilitation specialists in the fields of vocational training and quality assurance of providing services, to strengthen collaboration and share best practice examples and to adapt the experience in Lithuania. During the visits receiving organizations presented their activities, vocational training and vocational rehabilitation services, training methods and the ways of integration in vocational training and the labor market. Both organisation despite their busy schedule demonstrated warm and friendly reception, shared their remarkable experiences with Lithuanian colleagues. The reached results: organized 2 visits of 1 week duration, 12 vocational rehabilitation specialists improved their qualification; their knowledge was assessed by Europass mobility document, the publication about the experience and the knowledge was prepared and published. The experience gained during the visit and the information dissemination was done with xxx 5 different means on purpose to influence sectorial, national and international levels.Project duration 1 year.

Valakupiai Rehabilitation Centre initiated the project “POWER - Empowerment and Participation Driven Approach in Vocational Rehabilitation and Training for People with Disabilities”. With this project organization sought to improve qualification of vocational rehabilitation specialists in the fields of vocational training and quality assurance of providing services, to strengthen collaboration and share best practice examples and to adapt the experience in Lithuania. In cooperation with organizations from Portugal and Norway we organized 2 visits each of 1 week duration for vocational rehabilitation specialists who work in the field of vocational rehabilitation and integration for people with disabilities. Hosting organizations presented their activities, providing vocational training and vocational rehabilitation services, training methods and the ways of integration in vocational training and the labor market.Reached results: organized 2 visits of 1 week duration, 12 vocational rehabilitation specialists (include 2 PwD and 2 leading persons) improved their qualification; their knowledge assessed by Europass mobility document, the publication about the experience and the knowledge prepared and published on Valakupiai Rehabilitation website and Facebook profile. The experience gained during the visit and the information dissemination shared different means on purpose to influence sectorial, national and international levels.Project duration 12 month. Project started at 1/07/2017 and finished 30/06/2018.

The EU promotes the active inclusion and full participation of people with disabilities in society, in line with the EU's approach to human rights for disability, this means that disability is a problem of rights and not an issue of discretion. This approach is also the core of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), to which the Through cultural life and the arts, people and their communities express their specific identity and the meaning they give to their existence and configure a vision of the world that represents their encounter with the external forces that affect their lives.The right to participate fully in cultural life has three dimensions interrelated with the priority actions mentioned above, and that also reinforce each other:- Access, by which people are given the opportunity to experience cultural and artistic life and to acquire knowledge about a broad spectrum of different forms of expression;- Participation, which requires that concrete, individual or collective opportunities be offered, to express oneself freely, communicate, act and participate in creative activities, with a view to achieving the full development of the personality;- The contribution to cultural life, which includes the right to contribute to the spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional expressions of culture and the arts, thus promoting the development and transformation of the society to which it belongs.To achieve the participation of people with disabilities as generators and consumers of culture it is required the development of a focused approach on them, to encourage their creations and expose them, and to make them participate also in the structure and programs offered.With the Artability+ project, this is precisely what is intended: to offer training opportunities that allow adults with disabilities to improve their participation/social inclusion through the generation/creation of artistic expressions and/or the consumption of culture in standardized environments.To this end, in addition to offering them a training opportunity focused on the artistic field, cross-curricular learning of a transversal nature is contemplated in their curriculum, focused on improving their autonomy, so that each participant will have specific objectives agreed with him/her in this sense.Specific objectives to achieve:- Design and develop a training curriculum focused on the teaching/learning of artistic techniques and that includes the introduction of transversal contents focused on the promotion of the autonomy of people with disabilities.- Start up the training experience of the curriculum designed with an average of 12 participants per country, and that these pass from being students to trainers of their own experience.- Achieve the transit of participation by people with disabilities from specific environments to standardized environments.The main tangible result of this project is the design and implementation of an intellectual product based on the development of training, innovative and transferable contents both to other entities working in the disability sector as to other entities that work with people in situations or risk of exclusion. Indicate that part of these contents will be designed by the persons with disabilities themselves who will participate throughout the project as experimental students and will guide the process itself to a better adjust to their real needs. Among the training contents will be developed content related to artistic techniques, how to produce low-cost support products to ensure accessibility, how to set up an exhibition and how to guide it, and a methodological guide that includes how to work on aspects related to the empowerment of people with disabilities, how to boost their autonomous development, main lines of action with the environment and everything related to the evaluation of the training process.In addition, as tangible result is intended to create a virtual exhibition, in an app format.Other tangible results of the project will be those related to dissemination, a collection of good practices in the environment, the establishment of collaborations with environmental entities and/or the web and/or blog and/or social networks of the project.Finally, it should be noted that once the project has been finalized, the results will remain over time (those of the target group themselves and the tangible results), which will allow both the replicability of the experience as the partner organizations to continue working with this developed methodology.