“COEXISTENCE PLAN TO PROMOTE SAFE EUROPEAN TOWNS AND CITIES” Erasmus Project

Project Title

“COEXISTENCE PLAN TO PROMOTE SAFE
EUROPEAN TOWNS AND CITIES”

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: Access for disadvantaged; Civic engagement / responsible citizenship; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy

Project Summary

The aim of this project is to work primarily with families, on common values such as coexistence, social inclusion and citizen participation in order to achieve, in collaboration with Educational Centers and Local Authorities, safer European towns and cities. To justify the project, we draw from several studies on school violence in European countries. In Spain we have referred to the report of the ANPE Teaching Union Teacher’s Ombudsman for the 2018-2019 academic year on cases of violence in educational centers. In this study and in other European studies, they agree that approximately: 30% are cases of harassment, insults, and false accusations by families, 8% are cases of physical attacks on teachers, 4% are cases of pressure for grades, 10% are cases of use of new technologies for harassment (photos, recordings, Internet publications, mobile phone misuse), 20% are cases of disrespect, insults, assaults and threats on the part of students.
This data shows that the highest percentage of cases which affect coexistence come from within families. For this reason, it is necessary to start with the families themselves, to solve those confliects which affect day-to-day school life and, in the long term, citizens’ coexistence, creating insecure towns and cities.
Citizen participation is required: Parents’ Associations, Neighborhood Associations and Youth Associations, working together to create strong, stable families, which is a basic principle to raise children with higher levels of well-being and more positive academic results. The first pillar of the project is to unite all the representatives of the families and instill in them, a common spirit of European citizenship and positive coexistence. Our main focus is on families, but we should not ignore what surrounds them, including the schools where their children are educated and the town or city in which they live, because the individual is sociable by nature and interacts with others, especially with people from your town or city.
This is how the third element, the towns or cities in which these families live, springs into action as part of the project. The idea of the project is to achieve considerate, active families who strive for peaceful coexistence, working side by side with the educational centers, but with the support of local authorities who will create the necessary legal mechanisms to create the citizen participation bodies that unite the efforts of families and neighbours in the fight to put an end to violence.

The high incidence in cases of violence in schools caused by families does not only occur in Spain, but also in most other European countries. This is why we need to join forces in all the partner countries andunite synergies to end this violence which is becoming a social scourge in Europe.
We are a highly trained consortium in the field of coexistence: Etaireia (Greece) and the Association “Virgen de los Remedios” (Spain) worked for several years on the “Promoting School Safety” project. It is not enough to create safe schools and we must go one step further, by creating safe towns and cities with the support of families, in collaboration with schools and with the protection of local institutions. These two partners have worked for many years with the partner, Cumbria Credits (United Kingdom) with their own additional experience in school centered conflict resolution.
This consortium is strengthened by the entry of the AIS Association (Austria), with wide experience in social inclusion, since inclusion and the empowerment of coexistence is the only guarantor of interculturality and of the direct fight against any form of intolerance. Villamayor Town Council is key creating a legal framework for those families to actively participate in their town or city through Sector Councils or another European formulae in the construction of a united Europe.
This consortium, using active methodology and competence-based work and evaluation, especially as regards social competences, will be able to create a FAMILY SCHOOL, to train parents. Parents perform functions that surpass any other known activity in terms of relevance, time, effort and dedication and yet there is no formal training to prepare them.
A hard, yet exciting, innovative task, that will allow families to support schools and local institutions in improving coexistence. The end result is a multilingual platform that will make it possible to provide all families in Europe with a virtual family school, the contents of face-to-face courses and a guide to improving family coexistence. This is the most effective way to make European towns and cities safer.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 63475 Eur

Project Coordinator

Ayuntamiento de Villamayor & Country: ES

Project Partners

• AUSTRIAN ASSOCIATION OF INCLUSIVE SOCIETY (AIS) – VEREIN FUR EINE OFFENE GESELLESCHAFT
• Cumbria Credits Limited
• ASOCIACION VIRGEN DE LOS REMEDIOS
• ETAIREIA KOINONIKIS PAREMVASIS KAI POLITISMOU TIS NOMARCHIAKIS AFTODIOIKISIS MAGNISIAS