The Miguel Hernández University of Elche (UMH) is leading the U4INCLUSION Erasmus+ KA2 project along with the University of Calabria (Italy), Thomas More University College (Belgium), Institute for Inclusive Education at Kiel University (Germany), and Kveloce, an innovative company. This project, funded by the European Union, is managed by the Vice Rectorate for International Relations at the UMH.

U4INCLUSION aims to design, upon the fundamentals of experiences already acquired by the participating universities, a university training itinerary for persons with intellectual disabilities susceptible to being accredited and recognized by the European Union, which would enable improving upon the low levels of labor market insertion by this group.

Antonio Luis Martínez-Pujalte, a UMH associate professor and the Tempe-APSA Disability and Employability Chair, is project coordinator. Martínez-Pujalte states that university programs that provide employment training for people with intellectual disabilities are valuable for their training and that they foster their labor market insertion. “We want many more universities to offer these kinds of programs and open their doors to people with intellectual disabilities, for which we are going to provide them with the instruments so they can do just that,” adds the coordinator and UMH professor.

Throughout the length of the project, which will last for the next three years, the participating entities will prepare a university training curriculum for persons with intellectual disabilities in addition to corresponding teaching materials. The project will conclude with an international congress, to be held in Elche in May 2022, in which the results obtained will be presented.