On Wednesday and Thursday, 29 and 30 June, at the Sisters Hospitallers’ “Maison Sainte Germaine” Centre in Paris, the second meeting was held for the delegates of the Centres of the Order and of the Sisters Hospitallers taking part in the DESkTOP project subsidised by the European ERASMUS+ programme.

The project is being implemented over a two-year period and is entitled, “The Disabled Enhance Their Skills Through Online Platforms” (DESkTOP). It is being co-ordinated by the Juan Ciudad Foundation in Madrid, partnered by the Spanish Vodafone Foundation. The participating Centres are the Order’s Centres at Kainbach (Austria), Straubing (Germany), Konary (Poland) and Dublin, and the Sisters’ centres (in Paris and Lisbon) together with Hospitality Europe (Brussels-Belgium). This Community project has the largest ever number of Centres from the Order, and is the Sisters Hospitallers’ very first project.

At the Paris meeting, the delegates discussed the progress made so far in their care Centres with the use of the “Mefacilyta” platform built by the Spanish Vodafone Foundation, which make it possible to run personalised programmes, tailored to meet the needs of people with disabilities, enabling them to easily access them by mobile phone and tablets. 

The purposes of the project is to create a multimedia mobile application to enable people with disabilities to learn autonomously, and provide a teaching manual for educators and trainers in the teaching centres in the use of the new technologies.

Progress to date is quite encouraging, considering that all the Centres have already become very familiar with the Vodafone software, and have already drafted the first digital programmes to support their guests with disabilities to perform such occupational activities as manual work, the use of home appliances, and personal care and grooming.

Several practical experiences with the use of were also shared at the meeting by some of the guests at “Maison Sainte Germaine” in Paris, and with a video made by the Polish Centre.

The representatives of Vodafone also voiced their satisfaction because in the first few months of implementing the project, there had been a large number of hits on the “Mefacilyta” platform, with a constructive interaction with all the European partners involved.

The next meeting of the delegates of the Centres participating in the DESkTOP project will be in Straubing case (Germany) on 24 and 25 November, 2016.

The DESkTOP project is being financed with the support of the European Commission. 

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