Around 38 deaf youth under the Indonesian Organization for Deaf (Gerkatin) participated at the two-way training jointly conducted by L’Oreal Indonesia and PT Trans Retail Indonesia at the L’Oreal training academy in Jakarta on 18 August 2016. The event was initiated by L’Oreal as part of one-week activity with Gerkatin which aimed to establish a youth wing within the organization.

The training was also part of the commitment of the Indonesian private companies to be more inclusive. In the midst of discrimination issues against people with disabilities, enterprises have realized that disability inclusion makes good business sense. Top enterprises have found people with disabilities as untapped human resources.

L’Oreal Indonesia and PT Trans have actively involved in the ILO’s disability business forums and are both the co-founders of the Indonesian Business Disability Network (IBDN), which will be officially launched at the end of August. The IBDN is a voluntary network comprising members of multinational enterprises and partners from employers’ organizations, business networks, government, and disabled persons organizations (DPOs).

IBDN is automatically be a member of the ILO Global Business and Disability Network consisting of multinational enterprises, employers' organizations, business networks and disabled persons' organizations in countries such as China, Saudi Arabia, Costa Rica and Bangladesh.

In the training sessions, both companies and youth interactively learnt from each other. It was in line with the main aim of the this training that was to establish a synergized collaboration between people with disabilities and private companies as an effort to promote equal opportunities for people with disabilities.

Both L’Oreal and PT Trans shared their expertise on the world of work. L’Oreal conducted haircare and make-up training; while PT Trans shared their experiences in employing deaf youth as part of its company employment policy. The youth shared their view on barriers to communicate with sign language and expressed their hopes to be able to realize their potentials.

The ILO continues to support the inclusive initiatives from the business world. “The ILO is pleased that many companies are learning that people with disabilities are productive and that they bring many benefits to the workplace. This is very much in line with the objective of the ILO in promoting decent employment and equality,” said Tendy Gunawan, the ILO’s Programme Officer.

The event was concluded with better understanding about each other, identification of barriers to employment for people with disabilities, particularly deaf youth and lessons learnt on how to develop better synergies and collaboration in the future.