Type of Project: Funded project
DeafMentoring - (Re-)integration of people with a hearing impairment into working life through peer counseling

In order to enable people with a severe hearing impairment to enter the primary labor market or to secure a workplace, the project aims to develop and establish a mentoring support system based on the concept of "peer counseling". People with a hearing impairment who are well integrated socially and professionally serve as experts who show other hearing-impaired people ways to successfully deal with impairments and hurdles. Experienced hearing-impaired people, the DeafMentors, are recruited, trained and placed with hearing-impaired people who are in transition from school to job, unemployed or in an insecure or unsatisfactory employment relationship, the DeafMentees. A project team from the Department of Education and Rehabilitation of Hearing Impaired People at the University of Cologne and the SignGes Competence Center for Sign Language and Gesture at RWTH Aachen University is working with associations and organizations to develop a mentoring network and establish it in several centres throughout Germany. This network successfully places socially and professionally integrated hearing-impaired people (DeafMentors) with hearing-impaired people who are in transition from school to a job or vocational training. The individual support and guidance of hearing-impaired mentees by hearing-impaired mentors enables a linguistically and culturally appropriate transfer of knowledge and experience according to the principle of peer counseling. This approach proves to be particularly beneficial for the group of hearing-impaired people, as many young and adult hearing-impaired people do not have role models with the same impairment either in the family, at school, in vocational training or at work.