Munka-Kör Foundation for The Hearing Impaired was established in 2004.
Our mission is to help people with disabilities, hearing impaired and deaf people getting a job. Furthermore, it is especially important for us to popularize their integrated employment on the labour market, to create information which is accessible for everyone.
Our goal is to strengthen their social inclusion with integrated employment, with giving them advice personally and online, with making physical and infocommunications accessible for them, with organizing trainings. We do these activities with the help of fellow-helpers, which is an unique method in our country.
Our goal is to create a form of knowledge which is accessible for everyone, in order to do that we share and promote information, knowledge and good practices. As part of that, we make videos every day with a simple text, with sign language and subtitles. All the news, fact sheets, information, guides, descriptions of different professions, events, jobs, activities to safeguard their interests improve the equal opportunities and quality of life of the target group, including their family members and their environment.
Our working method in everyday work
Basically, for every project we take part in we have to win applications, which is not an easy task. Besides that, every project is a tool for our colleagues to develop their skills. We have to prepare our partners for that, because we often work more slowly because of these learning processes and because of communication difficulties we make more mistakes than a usual workplace.
Our foundation gives advice to the hearing impaired personally or online, as well as to their family. We help the development of hearing impaired individuals from different age-groups, primarily through different developments in our foundation. They work in several different fields, thus they gain experience in the working processes of information technology, accountancy, finance, employment, maintenance, gardening, creative work, administration, marketing, translation, using multimedia devices, vocabulary development, gastronomy.
We encourage them to show and share their knowledge while doing their chosen activities. So everyone shares his or her knowledge with the others, they always learn something while working, in order to gain marketable knowledge during that time that they spend with us. Our work also includes helping the integration of the hearing impaired and developing accessibility for them. Audio mentors, work assistants with different education (mainly hearing people) are involved in these working processes. Thus our hearing impaired colleagues are much more motivated to find a workplace on the labour market, which fits their actual knowledge and where they can earn more money or where the place where they work is more advantageous for them. We develop a „network” in which everyone becomes a helper or a teacher. We have a lot of experience in the fields of listening comprehension, vocabulary development, lip reading, using sign language and teaching.
If we hear about any novelties, opportunities, news, information in connection with the hearing impaired, which improve their communication skills and living conditions, we share them with our colleagues and clients, we give lectures and workshops for those who are interested. We are in contact with Hungarian authorities, employers, service providers, educational institutions and with the relatives of the hearing impaired. We provide services for about 500 people a year, our work is more and more far-reaching. Currently we have 27 colleagues with disabilities, 15 of them are hearing impaired, they have good relations with other hearing impaired people, which strengthens our influence. We can keep up our work only if we have at least four mentors instead of the current situation in which we have just one or two.
In educational material development projects of international programs (Erasmus+ projects with Polish, Greek, Italian, Spanish, German partners) we deal prominently with the preparation of descriptions of different professions, dictionaries, methological materials for tourism, gastronomy, gardening and for the joinery industry. With the help of these, both the employees and their employers can understand and solve their tasks more easily. We do our activities together with well-prepared universities, educational institutions and non-governmental organizations, in English. That is why we have more and more visually impaired colleagues who have good English skills. That is how a disadvantage becomes an advantage.
