Training on Safety Assessment and Management for New and Innovative Children’s Products Erasmus Project

Project Title

Training on Safety Assessment and Management for New and Innovative Children’s Products

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 vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Enterprise, industry and SMEs (incl. entrepreneurship)

Project Summary

The safety of children’s products is essential when it comes to items intended for babies and children aged between 0 and 14, as they are vulnerable consumers. The level of safety of the products on the market not only depends on what the product is made of, but also who distributes them, the institutions that establish the corresponding safety regulations, the consumers, the competent authorities that monitor the market or the health agencies who determine the incidence of injuries caused by using the products and inform parents about the measures to take to prevent lesions. They all form part of a “community” that helps increase the level of safety of the products that are sold on the European market.

Out of all these actors (industry, consumers, the authorities, healthcare professionals), there are two, small and medium sized companies and the consumers, whose lack of qualified human resources in this area limit their chances of being able to compete in the market, and with regard to the companies, of being able to increase the level of safety required by the consumers.

The ultimate goal of SAMNIC is to provide everyone who is involved with ensuring that children’s products are safe with an open educational resource on this matter to improve the skills of organisations and the expertise of people.

As a result of the European project, a platform has been developed called SAMNIC MOOC, which mainly supplies employees from the industry (especially SMEs) and consumer associations with a MOOC (Massive Online Open Course) on how to assess and manage safety in new and innovative children’s products.

The platform also enables users to get in touch with other people interested in the safety of children’s products and share their knowledge. In SAMNIC MOOC, users can join a multidisciplinary network of professionals called the SAMNIC community. To this end, SAMNIC MOOC strives to be more than just a course; it is a community that wants to support the collaborative learning of individuals with different profiles who are involved in child safety (industry, consumers, authorities, healthcare professionals and research centres).

SAMNIC MOOC has been developed by means of a consortium that, coordinated by the research centre specializing in toys, children’s products and leisure, called the Technological Institute for Children’s Products & Leisure, AIJU (Spain), is made up of a Czech Association for Toy and Play, SHH (Czech Republic), Alicante University, UA (Spain), the European Association for the Coordination of Consumer Representation in Standardisation, ANEC (Belgium) and the Universitat Degli Studi Di Padova, UniPd (Italy). The consortium represents the world of research (AIJU), the industry (SHH), specialized education on children’s injuries (UniPd), consumer associations (ANEC), the platform developer and experts in e-learning (UA).

Educational material and an open and free online course – SAMNIC MOOC- on how to assess and manage the safety in new and innovative children’s products have been obtained thanks to the project. The course has personalised itineraries that can be adapted to the interests of the user in question. The course is available in Spanish, English, French, Italian, Czech and Portuguese and it can be done using a computer, tablet or a mobile phone.

The knowledge and the skills that are acquired with the SAMNIC MOOC multilingual platform have an impact on the personnel of EU organizations and, therefore, on the work that they do. In the industry, the ability to assess and deal with the risks posed by the products that are being developed before launching them on the market, is a factor that minimizes costs and increases the competitiveness of companies. Moreover, the SAMNIC MOOC course focuses especially on the safety of new and innovative products, which means that SAMNIC MOOC provides companies that want to create new products with an extremely valuable resource to combine innovation and safety right from the design concept.

Similarly, the global nature of the course, whose key points focus on child safety, covers the evolving capacities of a child, the legal framework in the EU, the standardization, the hazards or the risk management process, among other things and it can help consumer organisations to increase and improve their participation in the consumer policies on a European level and in the standardization committees, and therefore defend consumer interests much better.

SAMNIC MOOC will be included in the courses supplied by the content developers, and what is more, the main video lessons are available on social networks, which means they can be accessed outside of the Erasmus+ project development.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 149433,75 Eur

Project Coordinator

ASOCIACION DE INVESTIGACION DE LA INDUSTRIA DEL JUGUETE, CONEXAS Y AFINES & Country: ES

Project Partners

• European Association for the Coordination of Consumer Representation in Standardisation
• SDRUZENI PRO HRACKU A HRU
• UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI PADOVA
• UNIVERSIDAD DE ALICANTE