TOURISTABLE

<< Background >>The Project was born from the idea of developing new practices and good practices based on the exchange of knowledge and innovative alliance between the world of tourism, organizations active in the inclusive work sector and operators who work with people with intellectual disabilities, in order to understand the training needs related to the new professional opportunities related to the inclusive tourism sector. The identified needs reside both in the needs of the labor market in the tourism sector and in the context of the social inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities and in the need to orient the latter towards healthy and productive work paths. The project was presented with a view to creating an effective link between the world of work and disability, aiming to make the target of people with disabilities active promoters of the territory, so that this link can manage the needs identified and respond to them by creating a replicable practice. Work inclusion in the classic sense is not possible for many people with intellectual disabilities, and for this reason the project has developed the concept of Work Involvement, applied specifically to the tourism context.<< Objectives >>The objective of the Project was to respond to the needs of the tourism market by creating a link between tourism, social inclusion and local development. The project developed an innovative model of professional training that would allow a meeting between operators and organizations active in the inclusive tourism sector and professional training organizations and young adults with disabilities in relation to the priorities of inclusion and innovation in the inclusive tourism sector. This meeting of needs materialized in the concept of Work Involvement, a soft form of work contribution within an entire tourist district that is called to collectively take charge of the response to this gap. The ultimate objective was to promote changing key for the concept of inclusive tourism, no longer understood only as welcoming guests, but as a system capable of including in the production chain even fragile human resources that cannot be employed in the classic sense but are still possible bearers of added value.<< Implementation >>The Project was developed in three main phases in which the actions were implemented:1) Identification of the priorities on which the project focused and creation of a beta version of the pilot model. Specifically, the following was identified:a. Skills most required by the local tourism sector, identifying common elements in the micro-territories of the 4 countries involved and reporting useful considerations on the differences;b. training needs of Italian, Greek, Slovenian, Spanish operators (indicator based on the survey carried out on the non-statistical representative sample of 20 adults per country);c. Beta training program;d. Mapping of territorial bodies with the characteristics that can be used on micro-models;e. Active involvement of relevant local stakeholders;2) Implementation through feedback from partners, development of the final version of the model and testing with the selected target groups;3) Dissemination of the expected results and eFinal Meeting, in order to spread good practices and expand the user base.<< Results >>The main result of TOURISTABLE was an innovative VET model focused on the themes of tourism and inclusion and which allowed a meeting between the labor market and people with intellectual disabilities. The aim was to develop a path that allows the valorization of local tourism resources in an accessible and competitive way and for people with intellectual disabilities to enter the labor market facilitated by the acquisition of new skills, becoming actors of local development. The project outputs are listed below:• N.1 Documentary dossier, result of Activity 2 “RESEARCH AND MAPPING OF SKILLS AND BEST PRACTICES”;• Beta version of the VET course and operational toolkit in specific tourist itineraries;• Involvement of n. 42 total stakeholders;• N. 3 operational reports on the VET pilot courses (Slovenian, Spanish and Italian) and on the territorial model of inclusive tourism tested.• N. 1 Final report on best practices and lessons learned to disseminate project results and make them easily accessible;• N. 1 web portal;• Production of project gadgets;• Social sharing of the project;• N. 16 Newspaper articles and press releases.