About the project

A few words about us

asperIT project

Where others see limits, we find potential!

Who are we?

European Foundation of Social Activation EFAS has been established by people working in the polish IT industry since 2006. A series of completed business projects have shown us the most prominent insufficiencies of this branch in our country. Apart from our IT knowledge, we are social responsibility motion. We had the desire to create a social enterprise using our IT expertise. That is why we have established EFAS and have performed social projects with it.

asperIT has become our flag, long-range project, which has established a course of our development.

With the opening of asperIT project, we wanted to combine our IT expertise, with a demand for social responsibility.

Find out first.

What is asperIT?

We have designed and developed the asperIT project as the European Foundation of Social Activation EFAS. We address it to people on the autism spectrum.

EFAS intends to activate people with autism, to work in the IT business. Our strive is to constitute a complex system and use it to improve the education and integration of neuroatypical people. We crave to encourage them to find their place in society and combine it with the effective usage of their unique skills, which can be exquisitely involved in the IT workspace.

The abilities of neurodiverse people are their vast upside. They perform superbly in concentration and immense precision demanding duties among great remembrance for numbers and facts. It results in an enormous quantity of talents sought-after by businesses in the IT industry. There exists a need for profoundly qualified IT employees in Poland, comparable to the rest of the world.

Pilot edition

We began our attempts to start the project back in 2015, right after establishing the foundation. Immediately we started our cooperation with the Lower Silesia Association for Autism.

The consequence was the pilot edition of asperIT, which we held in Wrocław. We accomplished it as a part of the grant project “Action Incubation” in the years 2017-2018. We created our unique recruitment and schooling program made specifically for preparing people with autism to work in IT.

Our initiative was broadly awarded, taking as an example prize for one of the eight most innovative projects of 2018 given by the Ministry of Development.

asperIT today

Based on our experience, we applied for a grant to the National Institute of Freedom. Our application has passed the requirements, and we obtained the subsidies as a part of the Fund of Civic Initiatives from the resources for years 2014-2020.

Thanks to this grant, we were able to develop our ideas and start making them a reality. We perform our work under the title “Modern methods of education for people with High Functioning Autism enabling them to work in IT.”

In June 2019 we began our first asperIT edition in Wrocław.

Project’s stages

Stage I — Recruitment

We perform the first part of recruitment using an online application form. Applicants are invited to individual interviews with our tutors. They choose the group which can partake in the IT test held to determine their computer abilities. Based on results, we choose several candidates with the highest scores and invite them to take part in asperIT.

Stage II — Social Expertise Course

This is the opening course to asperIT’s schooling cycle. It lasts five to six meetings. Participants learn proper functioning in the workplace, methods of communication and differences between approaching their bosses and colleagues. Our tutors teach them about aspects of group work and intricacies of keeping close relations with other people. Our beneficiaries bolster their self-consciousness and value. Tutors use modern methods adjusted to our participant’s needs. Cognizance gained in this part of the project helps them a lot, even in everyday life.

Stage III — IT Course

After completing the Social Expertise Course, we move onto the next stage, which is actual IT training. Our expert holds this part in non-stationary studies style — lectures and workshops take 6 to 8 hours a day, and they last two full weekends. Our tutor is present all the time in the classroom during the exercises. He or she helps the IT expert if the situation requires it, and calms and helps participants throughout the stage. Thanks to this intensive procedure, they can learn quickly and approach the prestigious ISTQB exam. When we prepare the exam, we cooperate with the Quality of Computer Systems Association.

Stage IV — Apprenticeship

The final and the most practical for the future work part of the course is our apprenticeship. Participants spend 5 weeks working online with 5 full day live meetings. They work with real-life cases from IT companies. They have to solve problems and work with designed issues. The tutor is present during live meetings. After this stage ends and the edition of asperIT is completed. Afterwards, our team starts to prepare for the next new edition.

Our team

Błażej Knapik

Project coordinator

Karolina Zych

Innovation specialist

Jacek Śmigiel

Tutor

Paweł Wojtyczka

Founder

Paweł Kazienko

IT specialist

Tomasz Jasiński

President of the board of the Foundation