Introduction

What is Deaf Enterprise?

Deaf Enterprise was a European project, with partners from 4 EU countries (click here to see the names of the partners). The starting date was 1 September 2016, the ending date 31 August 2018.

What was the objective of the project?

Our objective: to develop a curriculum for trainers. Trainers can use the curriculum to organize workshops for deaf sign language users. In these workshops, participants can learn about different aspects of entrepreneurship: from learning how to improve your ‘employability’ skills to learning how to set up your own business.

How can I use this curriculum?

In the curriculum, you find lesson plans for activities that you can use in your workshop. The lesson plans were developed with and tested by deaf trainers, in three countries.

In the lesson plans, you find a description of the activity and videos showing the activity and/or comments by the deaf trainers.

Who can use this curriculum?

Anyone can organize a workshop. It can be a school, a deaf organization, a deaf club,  a person. The target group for the workshops are deaf sign language users. It is therefore important that the organizers have good contacts with the deaf community.

The trainers of the workshop must be deaf sign language users. Preferably: two trainers per workshop. If possible, at least one of the trainers must have experience as a teacher/trainer, and one trainer must be a business owner or have experience setting up a business.

How do I set up a workshop?

The curriculum is for a workshop of 5 days, with 8-12 participants. However, you can select activities from the curriculum for a shorter workshop (1 or 2 days), or for a smaller group. Because of the interactive nature of the activities, our trainers say that 12 participants is the maximum number. Their advice: between 8 and 12 participants.

Participants must be sign language users because the language of communication is sign language. This was the preference of the participants and the trainers of our workshops. 

Here you can find detailed instructions for setting up a workshop.

Why is the Deaf Enterprise curriculum special?

There are many mainstream curricula and handbook about entrepreneurship. The Deaf Enterprise curriculum is special because all activities were developed and/or tested in 3 countries, by very experienced deaf trainers, working with different groups of deaf participants.

In the curriculum, we have indicated with small national flags,   which activities were used by the deaf trainers in one of the Deaf Enterprise workshops. In the reports of the workshops, you can find videos of these activities as well as comments made by trainers and participants.

In Denmark, an international group of deaf Frontrunners participated in the workshop. The videos of this workshop – with both trainers and participants using International Sign – makes their experiences accessible to a wider group of sign language users, across Europe.

Click here to see the trainers of the workshops that we organized.

All new trainers who use the Deaf Enterprise curriculum will have to adapt activities to ‘fit’ their national circumstances and the interests of their specific target group. However, they can be sure that all activities have been tested with, and have been found relevant by deaf trainers and deaf sign language users in three countries. 
Included in the curriculum are comments, recommendations and feedback that we received from trainers and participants.

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