NEW is a 30-month initiative involving 6 partners from Italy, Austria, Bulgaria, Belgium and Ireland to support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and micro-enterprises in creating more inclusive working environments that enhance the talents of neurodivergent people. The project will demonstrate how inclusive practices around neurodiversity are an asset for companies, with the potential to guide them towards a more ethical and prosperous future.
What is Neurodiversity? How it relates to workplace? What is the role of continuing VET and linked services in making SMEs and microenterprises “neurodiversity smart”, anticipating the needs coming from the labour market and the society as a whole?

FORMA.Azione is coordinating the transnational partnership of Neurodiversity at Work project to find common answer to these questions, starting from the assumption that inclusive practices around Neurodiversity are an asset for companies, with the potential to guide them towards a more equal, sustainable and prosperous future. 
Neurodiversity describes the natural variation in human brain functioning: it means that each one of us has different methods of learning and processing information. It refers to the variance of the human brain through the lens of differences instead of deficits or problems.

The partnership aims to:

• Raise awareness and increase knowledge among SMEs and micro companies about neurodiversity as a key asset in business
• Champion specific and regular data collection on neurodiversity at the workplace, especially in SMEs, to provide policymakers with a basis for their decision-making
• Equip business managers and staff with an appropriate set of competences, strategies and tools to introduce and practice neurodiversity at the workplace, and in this way, prevent discrimination, enhance the wellbeing of employees and benefit their organisations

NEW will provide SMEs and microenterprises in Europe with:

1) An Awareness-Raising Strategy aimed at reinforcing knowledge on neurodiversity among HR managers, SMEs and microenterprises’ managers and employers, trade unions and employers’ associations;

2) NEURODIVERSITY AT WORK (r)evolutionary inclusion model, equipping enterprises managers and employees with appropriate strategies and tools to introduce and practice neurodiversity in the workplace;

3) A multi-stakeholder European network for further sustaining and developing project NEW results