Empowering parents and families for active social inclusion and resilience Erasmus Project

Project Title

Empowering parents and families for active social inclusion and resilience

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 adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; Pedagogy and didactics; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning

Project Summary

The “Empowering parents and families for active social inclusion and resilience” project is aiming to create awareness and empower parents by providing tools channelled towards improving their parenting knowledge, digital proficiency, courage, creativeness and resilience. This final objective will be achieved by direct involvement of educators and participating organizations who address the needs of parents and families in their every-day work. Therefore the primary target group of this project are adult educators working with parents/families in various contexts such as schools, adult education institutions or social care field. They share significant interests and expertise in practice and engage with participants with similar core values.

Following the outbreak of Covid-19, which has affected both working and non-working parents and educators, what was considered a normal lifestyle, does not exist anymore as people have no choice but to succumb and adapt to a new way of life. The only effective way of communicating, working and schooling, has become the use of online tools. Families and educators are forced to delve into the techniques and new online tools. This has proven to be a big challenge for many families, especially parents that have challenges communicating with their children, language barriers, digital incompetency, balancing family and work life, and having problems involving in their children’s school and community. Another important factor are migration processes which are very different between the respective partner countries. European societies are becoming more exposed to diversity than ever before, where social inclusion gains more significance. Many societies are not prepared for these inevitable processes. Some countries might not welcome refugees but at the same time they are dependent on migrant workers. Thus their societies become culturally mixed. Migration processes can be daunting for some parents and families, exposing them not just to a new language, but also culture and tradition that can sometimes be entirely opposite from the one they are used to. Integration requires a great reorganization and readjustment which are followed by psychological discomfort and issues related to sense of identity.

The project’s objective is to offer better support and to empower families, who are facing various challenges in different life stages. By sharing best practises from partner countries and developing professional competencies of trainers and educators, partners learn to recognize new tools and methods for preventing families dropping out from society and thus promoting social inclusion in a diverse way. Competent professionals can act as agents of parents’ full potential and enable their active participation in local communities and society. The project will have a cross-generational impact by focusing on supporting active parenting and empowerment of parents who are consciously involved in children’s life and act as role models for active citizenship. The project also addresses a modern challenge which is a need for cross-cultural skills among experts and today’s citizens of Europe. More diverse societies require more diverse and culturally sensitive competencies, both from individuals, public service providers and professionals in the parents/family support sector.

Partners represent a variety of organizations such as NGOs (Greece and Norway), small, local association (Poland), adult education institution (Croatia), higher education institution (Finland), which makes an additional value of the partnership based on intersectoral cooperation. Diversity of experiences and background (political, economic, social and historical) from different parts of Europe will probably manifest itself in range of approaches to education, but also in the interpreting and organizing of the family unit in general conditions as in the event of a crisis. Thus the benchmarking activities will play an explorative and constructive role in this project.

Major activities of the project will consist of 2 transnational project meetings and 5 international trainings for educators that will be held in each partner country. It will bring both tangible and intangible results, consisting of training materials, online documentary and higher competencies of educators in following areas:
– use of applied theatre to stimulate learners´ creativity
– empowerment through applied theatre techniques in the classroom
– digitalization of social work
– preventive and early stage work with families including migrant families
– diversity in society and family
– role of children’s rights in society.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 78450 Eur

Project Coordinator

Stiftelsen Mangfold i arbeidslivet (MiA) & Country: NO

Project Partners

• TAMPEREEN AMMATTIKORKEAKOULU OY
• Stowarzyszenie na Rzecz Szkoly w Proszeniu
• EUROPEAN REGIONAL FRAMEWORK FOR CO-OPERATION
• Ustanova za obrazovanje odraslih Dante