A cafeteria run by people with psychiatric disabilities. A course for pizza makers, support for the production of accessories needed to help people with motor disabilities. This and much more is at the centre of a new intervention in Jordan, entirely dedicated to the Syrian refugee community and the Jordanian host community.
Attention to particularly vulnerable communities has always been part of our work in the contexts in which we operate, and in particular in Jordan, where we have been working with the Syrian refugee community for years.
Today, thanks to the support of the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (AICS), we can launch a series of new interventions, entirely dedicated to people with disabilities.
These include 'Madrasati Ala' (My most beautiful school), 'Adreen' and 'Bina'a Jusour' (Let's build bridges), designed to improve access to work for refugees from Syria, Iraq and the Jordanian community, in cooperation with numerous local partners.
Among them is the Al Hussein Society Jordan Center for Training and Inclusion, a pioneering centre that has been involved in the treatment of physical, sensory and psycho-social disabilities for years, guaranteeing fundamental services focusing on the social integration and autonomy of people with disabilities.
Together with them we will work throughout the year to create fair and sustainable employment opportunities, overcoming barriers together and building bridges that can break them down.
Together with the Al Hussein Society and Field Ready, an organisation of experienced engineers who contribute to humanitarian assistance with state-of-the-art solutions, we will launch a production of mobility aids and essential accessories for the mobility impaired not yet present in Jordan, which will then be made commercially available, generating profit for both the Al Hussein centre and the people reached, who are directly involved in their production.
We will also cooperate with Our Step, a Jordanian cooperative operating in the governorate of Zarqa, in the north-east of the country, founded and run by people currently in psychiatric care who work in assisting community members with psychosocial disabilities.
We chose to support it in a bold venture: to take over a cafeteria inside the Russaifeh hospital in Zarqa, which will create new jobs for Jordanian and Syrian community members with psychiatric disorders.
'Our Step' will then work with us to select families in the area who will be the recipients of micro-financing to launch small businesses, for which they will be trained in finance and entrepreneurship.
In Amman, as part of the same project, a pizzeria by the slice will also be opened, thanks to the support of the Apostolic Nunciature in Jordan, which has made space and funds available to set up a workshop that will employ young unemployed Jordanians and Syrians, teaching them pizza-making techniques with a course certified by Confartigianato.
At the end of the course, some of the young pizza makers will be employed and will continue pizza production, running the new business independently.
In addition, we will facilitate the selection of other young people who have been out of work in the refugee and host communities to participate in training placements in various humanitarian organisations, both in the capital and in other areas of the country. In an attempt to bring out new talents and create job opportunities for young people interested in working in cooperation.
Continuing to build walls and break down barriers, both physical and mental, in order to imagine together a future in which each community can live with dignity, despite the difficulties, wars and violence suffered.
