Ponisha, along with the support of Iranian startups held a three-day freelancing course for talents with disabilities in Tehran. During the event attendees got to learn about different aspects of freelancing taught by the experts of the community.
Disability is a challenge that could be part of anyone’s life. Have you ever thought about how hard it is for people with special conditions to find a suitable job for themselves? Statistics show that 11% of the population in Iran experience some sort of disability. Numbers also indicate that 70% of these people face difficulty to find a job. And for the visually impaired, the unemployment rate is over 90%.
There are many employment discrimination cases in our society against the people with disabilities, but this hasn’t stopped the tech and startup community in Iran to find an answer to this issue.
Last week Ponisha along with the support of many startups in Iran held a freelancing training course for the handicapped as their social responsibility. During this 3 day course held from March 7th to 9th at Zavie co-working space, attendees got to learn about different aspects of freelancing taught by the experts in the community. Over 35 people had applied for the first series of this event, and 12 people were invited to attend the program.
One of the main challenges for people with disabilities when applying for work is that they get rejected by the employer once they find out about the applicant’s situation. On a freelancing platform, what’s important for the client is that the project gets delivered on time, thus this won’t affect the freelancer’s situation.
Ponisha was founded in 2012 to connect local freelancers with employers in a better way. Today over 35,000 projects have been submitted on Ponisha and many developers are continuously taking projects using the platform.
Mehrabane, an Iranian crowdfunding platform for social activities also participated in this event and raised 15 million Toman (around 4 thousand dollars) for the event’s expenses in less than a week. This amount of money was raised with the help of 105 people and the awareness and support of local startups in the country.
Dozens of startups such as Chilivery, Snapp, Delion, Pintapin, Maniz and Faranesh also helped the program in different ways. Hopefully with the help of assisting technologies and online platforms, people with disabilities would be able to pursue new opportunities in the online world.
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