Nicoleta Mariana Orlea

Nicoleta Mariana Orlea is Director of fundraising and Communication within Autism Voice, speaker, trainer, and a freelance fundraising consultant for non-governmental organizations, as well as a Neurodiversity trainer in the workplace for companies that want to become more inclusive. She has assumed each professional role with the conviction that the systemic changes she causes will become direct benefits for all special children, like her own, and the world of the future will be more inclusive with young people with neurodiversity like autism, ADHD, ADD or OCD.

Presentation: Work Aid Kit, a complex program about the integration on the labor market, in companies, of neurodiversity people  

Abstract:

Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) are organizational frameworks that seek to promote the fair treatment and full participation of all people, especially groups that have been underrepresented or discriminated based on identity or disability. Neurodiversity is an invisible disability that began to be a subject of social acceptance only since the 90s at the international level. In Romania, neurodiversity has been talked about for less than ten years, and at the level of integration on the labor market, it is hardly discussed at all. DEI management on the labor market is also in a nascent state at the national level in almost all aspects. DEI practices are rather taken over from the Human Resources departments of well-known companies, while DEI policies are adapted to the Romanian legislation, but also to local culture and mentality according to incongruous criteria.

Autism Voice launched this year the Work Aid Kit program, a complex program dedicated to the inclusion of neurodiverse people on the labor market, with an emphasis on the solutions dedicated to potential employees, as well as employers, companies in the country, who want or need concrete resources for DEI of Neurodiversity. Starting with 2025, the association will also open a matchmaking platform service in this sense. The organization will also present for the first time, during the Conference, the results of the first DEI qualitative study of Neurodiversity on the labor market, in the national companies, which it is carrying out together with partners, with quantitative data and qualitative case studies, and other information valuable, which will emphasize the importance of the stringency of both the program and its results so far, as well as the awareness and education of the general public regarding invisible disabilities from an economic, social and legislative perspective.