Brazilian Institute for the Inclusion of People with Disabilities wants to partner with Portugal — DNOTICIAS.PT
The Olga Kos Institute for Cultural Inclusion, a Brazilian NGO that supports people with disabilities and has created inclusion indexes in companies and public entities, wants to have Portugal as a “partner in Europe” for the projects.
Founded in 2007, Instituto Olga Kos de In Cultural (IOK) is a non-profit association that develops artistic and sports projects for children, young people and primarily children, young people and adults with intellectual disabilities, but also people in situation of great economic and social vulnerability.
Today, in the great city of São Paulo, the Brazilian organization serves 3,600 participants a year, said the NGO’s Wolf Kos, in a telephone interview with Lusa, after having attended the president’s seminar in Lisbon, where he assured that he had developed contacts with companies, but also with other Portuguese entities with the aim of bringing projects to the Portuguese market.
Already working with those who have a signed contract, and with the Organization of Ibero-American States, the institution is now aiming to take its work further, to the European market, but also to the UN, where it wants to reach, recently at the end of the year, the “Escala Cidadã”, an index for evaluating the inclusion of people with disabilities, certified by Inmetro – National Institute of Metrology, Technology and Brazil to an entity supervised by the State that certifies the quality of products.
“We have a contract signed with the Brazilian Ministry of Citizenship to develop this ‘Citizen Scale’ and the disability inclusion index”, said Wolf Kos.
“Now, for example, most of us are going to research the municipalities in the national territory, with 5,400, to measure the degree of inclusion they have and what public policies are being made in this sense. This is being done until the end of the year (.. .) in order to build public policies”, he added.
At the same time, the institute is preparing to open a branch in Rio de Janeiro and to open another in Brasília.
After one participated in a seminar in Lisbon in April, Wolf Kos assured that he took from Portugal to “great hope” for a partnership, because “several contacts are made and there are interests” in Portugal, he said. The intention is that “Portugal can be the great exporter and the great partner” of the institute in Europe.
For that, he added, he had already met, before coming to Lisbon, with the Portuguese consul in São Paulo. “They have already opened the doors for Portugal to encourage this partnership,” said the organization’s president.
Contacted by Lusa, the Portuguese consul in São Paulo, Paulo Jorge Nascimento, confirmed that he had a meeting with those responsible for the Olga Kos Institute, in which a presentation of the organization’s projects was made. “There was indeed a first contact” of the Olga Kos Institute, said the diplomat in a telephone conversation.
“If it is verified, later, it will qualify a sequence of giving”, he added, not ruling out the possibility of verifying a Portuguese sequence, any approximation of the future organization.
Regarding what was presented by the Olga Ko Institute, the diplomat said that the work was very valuable to him.
“What we are, through the inclusion of one thing. The institute started to grow, because we can be its successor and our biggest figure emerged from the question of whether we were to do something playful, or if something playful, or if coined scientific thing. And yet if Kos to do the inclusion”, developed Wolff.
According to the official, the institute’s objective is also to take the “Citizen Scale” project to the “United Nations by the end of the year”.
The “Citizen scale” measures the degree of institutions through governmental or non-governmental institutions and bodies, of people with greater difficulties of five variables and 37 indicators.
“It is not punitive, but it can be corrective” and the main objective of the Olga Kos Institute is to be preventive, he said. It has four degrees, and when an entity “is fully inclusive, a seal of inclusion”, stressed the official.
Thus, as “companies advance in inclusion, they go according to the scale, being able to obtain financing at lower interest rates, they can over the term”, explained.
Achieving the seal of inclusion, which happens when they reach level four, “will be a major factor” in public tenders, he concluded.