ATOMS & CO Erasmus Project

Project Title

ATOMS & CO

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 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Pedagogy and didactics; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education

Project Summary

Although school hanging measures exist in most European countries, the percentage of early school leavers remains a concern. This is why six partners (FISSAAJ, CEC, Trinijove, Escoles Parroquials, University of Bologna and Gio.net) from three European countries (Belgium, Spain and Italy) have decided to continue their efforts on this theme by launching the Atoms&co project.

On the basis of the conclusions of the previous Atoms project (2013-2015), which highlighted the opportunity and importance of working on the family factors linked to early school leaving, the partners decided to focus on this area of work by developing a school hanging device centred on the link between families, schools and social assistance actors. The objective of this device is to create an alliance between the actors, in order to reduce the risks of young people dropping out.
To achieve the device, the partnership relied on a transnational ‘State of the art’ which took the form of a transnational report (Output 1). It had for objective to take stock of the different educational situations and characteristics of each national context, to define the factors favourable to the construction of educational alliances and also to identify the needs of field actors and families. This report was developed in close collaboration with local realities through questionnaires and different data collection methods (focus group, world café).

On the basis of this transnational report, and a series of best practices collected in the different countries, a device has been developed (Output 2). It is based mainly on the involvement and participation of stakeholders in the process, and is intended to be flexible and adaptable to different educational, societal and national contexts.
After developing the device, it was important to disseminate it but also to implement it in concrete situations. This is why the third output of our project took the form of a learning activity, which aimed to train people to the device and make them actors of the device. This “training of trainers” took place in December 2018 and brought together more than thirty participants with multiple profiles (social workers, educators, psychologists, teachers, etc.) from the three countries of the partnership.
Following this training, and in parallel with the implementation of the device, the trainers organised training sessions with the support of the project partners in order to disseminate the device within their local reality. This step was the opportunity to set up the testing phase of our project (output 4), in order to test and adapt the system according to the feedback received.

These different outputs were all carried out in conjunction with the dissemination activities of our project (output 5), in order to raise awareness among the widest audience possible throughout the project’s progress. These dissemination activities include the creation of a website (http://atomsandco.eu/) to make accessible the productions of the project; the distribution of 6 newsletters, participation in a seminar in Sicily to present the project, the dissemination of the project’s progress via the partners’ websites and social networks and the organisation of two European seminars (Bologna and Brussels) in the presence of representatives of public authorities, professionals from the field but also families.

In terms of impact and results, the project has made it possible:
– to achieve the various outputs, and in particular the construction and testing of a device for the inclusion of families within local contexts;
– to collect 26 tools and best practices that have been integrated into the device;
– to involve 44 institutions as beneficiaries of the project;
– to train 101 professionals to the device (including 32 during the general training in December 2018);
– to involve 81 professionals in the implementation of the device;
– to reach 436 families through the project activities;
– to strengthen or create local networks to bring together professionals working to prevent early school leaving.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 174371,64 Eur

Project Coordinator

FISSAAJ & Country: BE

Project Partners

• COMITE EUROPEEN DE COORDINATION
• FUNDACIO PRIVADA TRINIJOVE
• Fundació per a les Escoles Parroquials-L’Esperança
• ALMA MATER STUDIORUM – UNIVERSITA DI BOLOGNA
• Associazione Gio.Net