Learning Initiative For Elementary school Fun Oriented Resuscitation Coaching Europewide Erasmus Project

Project Title

Learning Initiative For Elementary school Fun Oriented Resuscitation Coaching Europewide

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Health and wellbeing; Early childhood education and care; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

“Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.” ~ Nelson Mandela

Out of hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) is the third-leading cause of death in industrialized countries. In Europe, it affects over 350,000 people annually.
In an OHCA occurrence, provision of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) within the first 2-3 minutes could save 100,000 of those people. However, timely access to healthcare, which is a key principle of the European Pillar of Social Rights, is not certain, since timely CPR would have to be provided by bystanders, who would have to be properly trained laypeople, rather than Emergency Medical Technicians, not likely to be on the scene during those first critical minutes.

The realistic and sustainable solution to this problem is to train a sufficiently large portion of the general population in CPR (roughly 15%). The most suitable group to receive this training are school children, whose main activity is learning, and who will readily absorb new knowledge and skills.
Respectively, the optimum environment in which to provide education and training is the school environment, which offers equal access to all children, regardless of financial, social, religious, racial or ethnic background and allows them to function as multipliers. Schools also provide a steady supply of potential trainers – the teachers whose role is to educate children.

In 2016, the “Kids Save Lives – ERC position statement on school children education in CPR”, which was endorsed by the World Health Organization, presented this information and suggested training school children above the age of 12 in CPR in all schools. Other research proposes the age of 10 as the minimum age for efficient CPR training, based on physical, cognitive and emotional characteristics.

Project L.I.F.E.F.O.R.C.E. (Learning Initiative For Elementary school Fun Oriented Resuscitation Coaching Europewide) advocates the development of a learning methodology, educational tools and e-learning environment to pre-train pupils aged 6-10 years old in elements of CPR using innovative, learning-by-doing activities, to prepare them for proper CPR training later on. It will also cultivate the ideals of solidarity and volunteering and will promote a culture of prevention, well-being and healthy lifestyle across Europe.

The project will also provide teachers with innovative non-formal teaching methods, which will not only apply to CPR training, but also to teaching other subjects, bringing added value to its outcomes.

To achieve this, the project will be implemented in elementary schools in the 4 participating countries, taking into account linguistic, cultural and other particulars. It will also organize a series of events and activities to demonstrate its outputs and impact, not only to school children and teachers, but also to head teachers, parents, pedagogists, stakeholders and policy makers on local, national and European level. The project outputs and results will be thoroughly disseminated through a series of carefully planned activities, such as social and cultural events, conferences and publications, spanning long after the project’s end, to promote sustainability and to ensure that it will reach the maximum number of interested parties.

The project will be implemented in five phases, as described below:
1st: Overview of nursery and primary school educational systems in European countries. It will focus on the educational systems in European countries with special attention to elements that are relevant – in some capacity – with the pre-training of 6-10 year old school children in Basic Life Support and first aid.
2nd: Development of methodology to convert BLS skills into suitable, innovative educational activities. This phase will identify a common ground on which to build the interdisciplinary methodology for the pre-training of 6-10 year old school children in Basic Life Support and first aid, using experiential, interactive activities, in order to promote critical thinking and enhance skill retention.
3rd: Educational material for the pre-training of children. This phase will provide the educational material that will deliver the actual cognitive and behavioral skills to school children, using innovative, learning by doing activities.
4th: Educational material for training the trainers. This phase involves the development of a Training the Trainers material, which will enable the trainers to effectively deliver pre-training of children.
5th: Development of e-learning platform, multimedia, app to deliver the on-line learning modules.

The long-term plan of the project partners is to demonstrate the effectiveness of pre-training of 6-10 year old school children in CPR and to campaign for inclusion of CPR-first aid training in the national curricula of the EU member-countries, in order to increase the number of future CPR providers and help save as many lives of OHCA victims.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 199881 Eur

Project Coordinator

PANEPISTIMIO THESSALIAS & Country: EL

Project Partners

• Cyprus Resuscitation Council
• ITALIAN RESUSCITATION COUNCIL (IRC)GRUPPO ITALIANO CARDIOPOLMONARE
• KLINIKUM DER UNIVERSITAET ZU KOELN
• KIDS SAVE LIVES – ΤΑ ΠΑΙΔΙΑ ΣΩΖΟΥΝ ΖΩΕΣ
• ELLINIKI ETAIREIA EPEIGOUSAS PRONOSOKOMEIAKIS FRONTIDAS
• EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY CYPRUS