Let’s talk about homelessness: Learning as a tool for social integration of homeless people Erasmus Project

Project Title

Let’s talk about homelessness: Learning as a tool for social integration of homeless people

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Access for disadvantaged; Inclusion – equity; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

The project’s objective is to contribute to the social inclusion of homeless people and help them find their way out of homelessness, using learning as a tool. Society at large, homeless people and organizations and individuals working with homeless people are the target groups of the project.

Without having a basic understanding the complex social phenomenon of homelessness, people are bound to have preconceptions and prejudice. Homeless people often face stigma, and experience losing employment, housing, friendships when it turns out that they are homeless. These days homelessness is present in urban settings around the globe, yet it is one of the social issues surrounded with the most shame and rejection. This rejection is a main obstacle to the social inculsion of homeless people. Well-designed authentic opportunities for the general public to learn about homelessness can help fight against rejection.

Homeless people face many obstacles to social participation, in addition to the lack of adequate housing: often they have low education levels, difficult access to jobs, a lack of personal suppport system, health or other personal difficulties. Skills development, through real-life tasks or non-vocational learning tailored to their situation and complex needs, is an important means to facilitate their social inclusion.

Organizations working with homeless people – or other marginalized groups- can decide to provide non-formal education to their clients in several forms (such as traning in literacy, personal finances, digital skills, emplyment skills, self-represenation and advocacy, peer learning opportunities, clubs, arts programmes, to name a few).

The partners believe that client involvement is an important aspect of both awareness-raising about homelessness, and in the functioning of services for homeless people. The empowerment of homeless people by their active participation as also one of the core aims ot the project.

The present project aims to collect and observe these services by involving partner organizations from two Central Estern European and two Western European countries.

All the activities of the project will contribute to the development of two intellectual products and the capacity building of the participating organizations. Exchange of experience and training of homeless or formerly homeless people, professionals from the fields of social support and communication will also take place and serve the same purpose.

The partners will develop a toolkit based on selected good practices for awareness-raising and client involvement, providing users with a theoretical and practical material to design and implement their own activities in this field.

In the framework of the international visual arts competition designed and advertised by partners, amateur and professional, homeless and non-homeless artists will be invited to create pieces of visual arts that have a message reducing the above described prejudice. An album and an online collection with free access will be created from the pieces of visual arts received in the competition. The collection is designed from the beginning for use after the project period by a wide audience, journalists, researchers, professional support workers and organizations that work with homeless people, or touch the topic of homelessness. Positive messages in the images with a strong artistic value created by popular or unknown artists will appear in professional journals, street papers, annual reports and online surface of NGOs.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 139959 Eur

Project Coordinator

Menhely Alapítvány & Country: HU

Project Partners

• Stiftung Bethel
• Arrels Fundació
• Divadlo bez domova