Stop epidemic growth through learning Erasmus Project

Project Title

Stop epidemic growth through learning

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: Civic engagement / responsible citizenship; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Health and wellbeing

Project Summary

Since the first COVID-19 cases appeared, countries have developed different strategies and responses to cope with the pandemic. After the emergency state, a collaborative leadership approach will be essential and working together as a collective, investing in a participatory citizenship, will be key.
It is not possible to consider this is a time with no consequences and that no other emergency situations will occur. The use of teleworking, the social distance and the increased health and care needs implied uncovering new methods of work, understanding society’s biggest fragilities and will imply changes in work and training, tools and routines that will only be clear in the next months and years. Apart from all the innovations that are being developed and the new ways services are now being delivered, there is the need to prepare bottom-up initiatives that build-up the competences of social care professionals, community leaders, informal caregivers and volunteers so that these are prepared to deal with such emergency situations in the future.

STEP-UP intends to develop a training tool for these target groups, where they are introduced to the actual impact of behaviours in the spread of a pandemic/emergency situation. There, they can learn what preventive measures exist, their impacts and the different levels of measures – individual, at work, in the family, at state level, among others. Although there is plenty of information available online, it is difficult to know which one is reliable. Also, there is the need to prepare the right training methods to approach the care sector, in an adequate and engaging way.

The core of this tool will be an educational game but that can also be used as a recreational game for the common public. In STEP-UP, the players will play with the aim to stop a pandemic from spreading. A list of measures will be displayed and the player needs to learn about them in order to be able to choose those that would help to impede the virus spread without damaging the economy or causing societal anger. This would also help people to better understand and follow governmental measures (which they actually not always do in current times) and to set aside true facts from myths and fake news.

STEP-UP is first aiming at social care workers and similar target groups described above as primary users, but the game will also be usable by any citizen and will therefore have a larger aim in adult training, especially those with lower skills and qualifications.

Besides the gaming tool and the complete training toolkit, a manual on social and policy interventions will be delivered, that aims to offer target-group oriented guidelines and insights on early detection, preventive measures, healthcare and social care interventions, policy measures and communication. The manual will be completed with real-life oriented user stories, good practices and lessons learned.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 271480 Eur

Project Coordinator

SHINE 2EUROPE, LDA & Country: PT

Project Partners

• AFEDEMY, ACADEMY ON AGE-FRIENDLY ENVIRONMENTS IN EUROPE BV
• WISE ANGLE CONSULTING SL
• HRVATSKI ZAVOD ZA JAVNO ZDRAVSTVO
• ISIS Institut für Soziale Infrastruktur gemeinnützige GmbH