Project News

This year, DPUB2 activities started in February and all activities for the first half of 2022 were successfully completed by the third JCC (Joint Coordination Committee) meeting on 30 June. The highlight of the first semester's activities was the launch of the "Pilot Project of the Job Coach Employment Support Services".

In implementing the pilot project, DPUB2 focused on three activities. (i) human resource development of job coaches, (ii) establishment of a grant system and (iii) corporate awareness-raising activities.

i) Human resource development of job coaches.

Training job coaches is the most important aspect of launching the job coach employment support service. However, as this service will be offered for the first time in Mongolia, besides there is still no single job coach, we decided to start our activities by holding an introductory seminar to widely promote understanding of the concept and services of job coach, instead of training a specialised job coach from the beginning.

As a result, 90 persons, including persons from NGOs and organisations supporting persons with disabilities, who are willing to work as job coach in the future, attended the introductory seminar for job coaches. These 90 persons are not yet able to provide professional job coach employment support services. However, they understand the basics of job coach and the services. It is therefore expected that they will provide the basic services of job coach through a pilot project. By implementing the pilot project, we can understand the effectiveness of the current services and the challenges they face. In the end, we can develop the better job coach services.

ii) Establishment of grant schemes

Secondly, job coaches cannot provide services as volunteer work. Even if the service is excellent, if it is not sustainable, there is no point in developing human resources. Therefore, the government need to provid subsidies to job coaches who provided job coach employment support services, but there were no regulations governing the subsidy scheme.

Therefore, the DPUB2, in cooperation with the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection, has developed the Guideline Regulating Job Coach Employment Support Services. The guideline include a definition of a job coach, the content of job coach employment support services and the procedure for accessing subsidies. The Guideline have been approved as a Ministerial Decree on 31 May 2022 and form the basis for the provision of job coach employment support services.

iii) Corporate awareness-raising activities

Finally, even if job coaches are trained and a grant system is established, employment of persons with disabilities will not be promoted if the companies that actually employ persons with disabilities are not interested in employing them and if they think that persons with disabilities cannot work. Therefore, DPUB2 has started to disseminate examples of companies that already employ persons with disabilities in Mongolia as good practices. Using the Mongolian web media IKON, DPUB2 has published articles on the employment of persons with disabilities, first at M-mart supermarkets and then CU convenience stores, from the perspectives of persons with disabilities, companies and their families. Both articles were well received over 850 LIKEs.

DPUB2 will continue to disseminate good practice examples of employment of persons with disabilities in Mongolia and will eventually introduce examples created by the job coach employment support service.

In addition, an awareness raising seminar for companies was held to explain to them about the benefits of employing persons with disabilities, specific methods, social responsibility, the legal employment rate and the levy system. The legal employment rate for the employment of persons with disabilities in Mongolia is 4%, but it is not well adhered to and very few companies make payments. Therefore, through the seminar, we carefully informed the participants that instead of forcing companies to employ persons with disabilities, the government and NGOs should support and cooperate with companies to promote the employment of persons with disabilities, and that companies that are unable to employ persons with disabilities must then pay the levy.

Through the seminar, we found that many of companies felt the need to employ persons with disabilities, but until now they had no support from the government, and also they do not know about overseas examples. It is therefore, many of the companies had to employ persons with disabilities by their own efforts.

Many of the participating companies expressed interest in the job coach employment support service, and some have even started to consider placing job coaches in their companies. Although the awareness raising seminar has only been held twice, we could sense a great potential.

2. Planned activities for the second half of 2022

In the second half of 2022, the provision of job coach employment support services will actually begin. Many challenges and problems will arise, and we will need to work with the Mongolian government, employment support organisations and job coaches to come up with solutions as a DPUB2. We will further develop the human resources of job coach and continue to focus on raising awareness among companies and disseminating good practices. We will also focus more on publicity and disseminate our activities through the media. We hope that more people will realise the importance of employment for persons with disabilities and use the job coach employment support service.

Awareness raising seminars: experiential training to promote understanding of disability

Awareness raising seminars: during lectures

Completion ceremony of the second job choach introductory seminar

Job coach introductory seminar: Japanese experts to lecture online.

Company visits.