Disability, Equity, Justice Working Group organised our third policy consultation on ‘Employment and Disability’ in Goa + virtual mode with the Office of the State Commissioner of Persons with Disabilities in collaboration with the U.S. Consulate General, Mumbai, Mariwala Health Initiative and Rising Flame. The day-long consultation was organised on May 11 from 9.30 am IST to 5 pm IST. We had a total of 52 in person participants and 170 virtual participants who were disabled as well as non disabled.
The consultation had 3 panels unpacking: ‘Employment, Livelihoods and Inclusion’; ‘Entrepreneurship and Future of Work’ and ‘Workspace Mental Health and Safety’ with speakers from across the country with a broad range of expertise on these issues. We received succinct recommendations from each panel that included: best practices to adopt for disability inclusion in the workplace, building inclusion and workplace safety policies to enhance productivity of persons with disabilities, creating apprenticeship programmes to help create familiarity for job opportunities, improving accessibility of buildings and digital accessibility to ensure more persons with disabilities can access and participate in workplaces and finally improving their access to credit, financial loans and even seed money for entrepreneurship possibilities.
You can see excerpts from the panels:
Panel 1: Employment, Livelihoods and Inclusion,
Panel 2: Entrepreneurship and Future of Work,
Panel 3: Workplace Mental Health and Safety.