As with any organisation that wants to grow, the beginning of the year at the Jamba Foundation is spent planning and setting goals to achieve, as well as looking back over the past year – essential to see the bigger picture together,
- where we are,
- what we have achieved,
- and that we all look in the same direction.
2023 was an eventful year for Jamba. We have expanded the team, become a public benefit organisation, structured our training in the Career Academy and have been good at building relationships – both with strategic and business partners, NGOs and Pro Bono.
One of our most important awards this year is the Open Minded Companies Award was. The competition, organised by HRPOWER, assesses initiatives by small and large companies to promote diversity in the workplace. Our joint project with Prezi and SignCoders, a software testing workshop for jobseekers with disabilities, won the award in the category “Corporate programme for the support of people with disabilities”.
One of our biggest achievements in 2023 is the concept of a “Career Academy”, which aims to increase competitiveness and offer individual career paths to jobseekers with disabilities and people with disabilities through a complex training programme. The Academy is made up of training programmes developed and tested by Jamba.
The Career Academy’s trainings are delivered by an inclusive team of 7 trainers who work to fill gaps in the skills of jobseekers with disabilities to improve their competitiveness in areas such as communicating about disability, speaking confidently in front of others, CV writing, interview preparation and conflict management.
Last year, based on and as a result of the organisational strategy, Jamba was expanded with two new members of staff: training coordinator Katalin Juhos and communications officer Orsolya Hering. With them, the permanent team has grown to 6 people, working together with disabled and able-bodied staff.
We are also proud of our volunteers. In 2023, our inclusive team of 18 inclusive experts and volunteers (participative experts, lawyers, communication and marketing professionals, photographers, IT professionals, English teachers) will be joined by 13 additional volunteer mentors who will provide one-to-one support to jobseekers with disabilities or long-term illnesses.
The work of our volunteers contributes to the building and sustainability of our organisation, to raising the quality of our services and to achieving the social change that is our main organisational goal.
We have also trained with our team in 2023. As part of our professional self-development, in addition to our monthly psychological supervision sessions, we attended an autism training with our trainers, during which leading experts from around the country shared with us how our team can best respond to the needs of people with autism and improve the accessibility of our services for them.
In 2023, we also launched a series of community programmes to provide accessible leisure activities, builds confidence in the organisation and also increases self-confidence.
With Jamba, a total of 27 people have so far found a permanent, well-paid and high-quality job partners, they are the ‘tip of the iceberg’. Meanwhile, other jobseekers who come to Jambá will receive a wide range of support from the Career Academy to strengthen their skills and develop their competitiveness, so that other candidates with a disability can also move towards the ‘top’.
By 2023, a total of 344 jobseekers will be in contact with the organisation, having participated in 302 Career Academy development programmes so far. Among them
- 69 people at community events,
- 190 people in soft skill training,
- software testing workshop series with 21 participants,
- 22 in individual mentoring,
- and 7 people participated in English learning.
Another important goal of our organisation is to create a new, positive image of people with disabilities, so we have also put much more emphasis on communication activities in the past year.
In 2023, we were covered by ten media outlets, and I thank you all for 2023 with my favourite, Free Europe’s video report!