EMP:PATH: Exploring mindful parenting, a path for social well-being Erasmus Project

Project Title

EMP:PATH: Exploring mindful parenting, a path for social well-being

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 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; Health and wellbeing; Research and innovation

Project Summary

There is a growing interest in mindfulness as a way of living with increasing scientific evidence of its value for optimal health and well-being. Since several years mindfulness is also being increasingly integrated into education. The evidence shows that as benefits educators and learners demonstrate increased resilience and ability to better cope with stress, difficult moments and relations. Educationalists agree on the fact that relationship needs to be nurtured long before the moment of crisis, both from the educators’ side (teachers, parents, social workers) and the children side.
The project partners either had experience in mindfulness or in parents training and education and both were supportive to each other for the benefit of the project learning, process and results.
The project aimed at exchanging practices in the field of parenting, parents’ education and mindfulness for children and schools, at learning from each partner’s experiences and practices as well as from what was available in their national contexts, at exploring the contact points for laying the foundation and verifying the feasibility for the development of a mindfulness course for parents based on the different approaches of the partners involved; at bringing mindful parenting to the attention of a wider audience and to get recognised as significant stakeholders in the field.
The project’s core activities were local parents’ workshops where the educators and parents together practiced mindfulness and together reflected on the impact on themselves as educators and persons. The impact is presented in a form of stories collected by the partners from some of the parents and educators that did attend the local workshops. The stories confirm the project hypothesis that the practice of mindfulness within the family context shows a number of benefits: calmer and more relaxed parents, better emotional regulation and enhanced relationships between the parents and the children.
The workshops were the way to network at local level, to reach out to parents, to implement into the local contexts the learning from the training activities undertaken in Austria (The Way of Council and Jon Kabat-Zinn); Mindful Self Compassion and .b in the UK; WakeUpSchool Project at the Plum Village in France as well as the famous method “Arguing Well” developed by CPP.
Tha partners’ reflections and conclusions are collected in the Guidelines for Developing a Mindful Parenting Curriculum.
The Guidelines, the stories and much more are available for free through the project website http://www.mindfulness-in-parenting.eu that will continue to exist.
The project was able to directly reach out to 1.030 parents and educators, with 87 local workshops and 149 hours of collective practice with the parents, those impact is featured in 30 stories in the 4 languages.
A series of dissemination activities undertaken – through events, social media and personal contacts – were providing partners with the possibility to network and connect with stakeholders in the filed of education and Mindfulness across Europe and also to be recognised as key stakeholder in the field, by being invited to several events and be listed as providers of mindful parenting.
The local workshops are still taking place in the 4 countries and small thematic format are under development based on the parents and educators requests. The partners are currently harvesting the results of the intensive work done and defining new partnership and cooperations for events and for even more strengthening the relevance of Mindfulness in education. The results of the project are well embedded into the partners core activities thus reinforcing the systemic impact obtained.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 40150 Eur

Project Coordinator

LIMINA OG & Country: AT

Project Partners

• Plymouth & District Mind
• Centro Psicopedagogico per la pace e la gestione dei conflitti
• Lydille Lang