The PORCIDE Project- Projecto Original para a Rentabilização de Capacidades Integrando Deficientes na Economia (Original Project to Lucratively Use Skills by Integrating Disabled People into the Economy) – started in 1995 after Portugal Telecom and TELEMANutenção submitted an application to the European Commission within the SEED programme, which consisted of searching for solutions to integrate disabled people into the labour market. Following this application, TELEMANutenção and PT Comunicações signed a protocol in order to set up a consortium, later joined by Hewlett-Packard-Portugal and Microsoft-Portugal, with the objective of integrating 20 disabled people, using information technologies, in Portugal. The idea was to set up a business, where each partner would supply, for a period of six months, the services and product infrastructure needed to sell the services of a group of disabled people, working as teleworkers. However, the project was prolonged until April 2000.
The objective was for each disabled person, working from home, to acquire the necessary skills to place their services in the market on a regular basis. The consortium was set up in order to gather, at no cost to the teleworker, all the necessary elements to set up a working office within his/her home. PT Comunicações supplied the communications infrastructure, HP supplied all the hardware (computer, scanner, printer, modem, zip drive), MICROSOFT supplied the software, TELEPAC provided the Internet service, EDSON/FCB contributed with marketing support and project and teleworker communication. TELEMANutenção was responsible for all the initial and follow-up training for the service, supplying the organisational system and coordinating the teleworker as well as obtaining clients for each service in order to generate a stable and pleasant flow of work for the teleworker. 
The project kept to its objective of integrating 20 disabled teleworkers. All integrated teleworkers were unemployed and professionally inactive when the project started. They all went from a situation of being financially dependent to become active contributors to the State, with an average income of 354,400 PTE. However, not everybody managed to adapt to teleworking, either due to the lack of human contact, personal insecurity or lack of discipline. Nevertheless, overall, the balance of PORCIDE is very positive. Even teleworkers who chose to abandon the project or were not capable of keeping professional standards, took advantage, in their new chosen paths, of the experience that gave them autonomy and renewed self-belief. Even though the social aspect is extremely important, it has never taken over the economic factor. 

THINK – Expansion and Renewal of PORCIDE
PORCIDE ended in April 2000, but continuity and international expansion are guaranteed by the THINK project, started in September 2000. The success of the socio-economic model created by PORCIDE gave rise to THINK, which ensures that PORCIDE will be reproduced in six European countries: Spain, Italy, Greece, Scotland, Latvia and Portugal (where THINK is designated by PORCIDE II/THINK), integrating a total of 300 new disabled people into the labour market. The project has guaranteed the financial support given by the European Commission to the different countries involved.
In Portugal, DIÁRIO DE NOTÍCIAS and PRICEWATERHOUSE COOPERS have joined the consortium as communication and recruitment and selection partners, respectively. RUMOS, Desktop Streaming, 3C, Alcatel and ServerArts also recently joined the project.
In each participating country, the consortium, often created with other branches of the multinationals that participate in the Portuguese consortium, is responsible for the integration objectives of THINK: 60 people in Spain, 60 in Italy, 40 in Greece, 20 in Scotland and 60 in Latvia. 

In the medium term, it is hoped the project will expand to Brazil, the USA and New Zealand.