The overall goal of the 'Inclusive Campus Life' (ICLife) project is to make life on a campus for higher education more inclusive. More specifically, ICLife promotes and supports the inclusion of People with Intellectual Disabilities in campus life. To achieve the project goal, a concept for inclusion of young adults with Intellectual disabilities on higher education campuses will be developed and deployed by four universities in Europe. The consortium consists of campuses in Finland (Lapland University of Applied Sciences), Belgium (Thomas More), The Netherlands (Hogeschool Utrecht) and The Czech Republic (Palacky University). Together with the 'European Association of People with Intellectual Disabilities and their Families' (Inclusion Europe) all these institutes of higher education commit themselves to having students with intellectual disabilities participate to university life. The idea to open up campuses for students with intellectual disabilities comes from Thomas More, based in the charitable city of Geel, Belgium. Geel is renowned for its system of family care for psychiatric patients. Since the middles ages already, patients with mental or/and intellectual disabilities have stayed and lived with families in the surroundings of Geel. Patients live with foster families, help in the households or with farming life. Instead of defining the target group of People with Intellectual Disabilities based on the classical IQ distribution, we rather take the approach of the recent version of the 'Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders', i.e. DSM-5. In that approach people are regarded as gifted on multiple aspects, in their case with an impairment of general mental abilities in three domains: the conceptual domain, the social domain and the practical domain. The supported paradigm in this project is one that leaves the path of stereotyping, recognising the talents and capabilities instead. Also part of the target group of the project are regular students in higher education. Their vision on society will become broader and more realistic, as they will meet students with intellectual disabilities on the campus. They will share meals, leisure time activities and even university classes. The students with intellectual disabilities will both take classes, and as well become 'teachers' in the sense of life experts sharing their experiences. A lot of know-how on working with People with Intellectual Disabilities will become available to the project by cooperating with seventeen 'associated partners', ranging from day-care centers over technology providers to training and work placement organisations. Another source of intellectual enrichment comes from the geographical spread of all mentioned organisations so far, not limited to the four partner countries. An advisory board will be installed to extend this international know-how network to universities from seven more countries for input. The dissimination network covers almost all European countries, forty-three organisations spread all over Europe agreed to communicate the project outputs.Project methodology envisaged will provide four complementary types of meeting: 'transnational project meetings'; 'national monitoring committees' in all four participating countries; 'international monitoring committees' that act as contact point for an external evaluator; the 'advisory board' mentioned before. A risc assessment matrix is already started at the moment of redaction of the project charter, and will be continued throughout the project.The members of the consortium all start organizing education programs for youngster aged 18 and more with intellectual disabilities. Therefor all campuses will have to be made more accessible for them, for instance by using pictograms and photographs besides text or by assigning buddies amongst regular students. This allows to invite People with Intellectual Disabilities in both regular and specific courses. As part of their curriculum or to integrate with daily campus life, work placement on the campus will be organised. As to assure the quality of this inclusion process across all interested European universities, an 'Inclusive Life Monitor' instrument will be developed. Trainings and events will be organised during the project to share this know-how, and install feedback loops.Progression on delivery of these outputs will continously be communicated via the Inclusive Campus Life website (http://www.iclife.eu). This channel will be used to communicate the project results, the partners, and is open for information requests of all kinds related to the project. Please meet us there !
University College ‘Thomas More Kempen’ was granted a KA2 project from Call 2016 (Erasmus+ action). The consortium consists of campuses in Finland (Lapland University of Applied Sciences), Belgium (Thomas More), The Netherlands (Hogeschool Utrecht) and The Czech Republic (Palacky University). Together with the 'European Association of People with Intellectual Disabilities and their Families' (Inclusion Europe) all these institutes of higher education committed themselves to having students with intellectual disabilities participate to university life. More detailed information can be found on the website of the project at the following address: https://www.iclife.eu. The overall goal of the 'Inclusive Campus Life' (ICLife) project is to make life on a campus for higher education more inclusive. More specifically, ICLife promotes and supports the inclusion of People with Intellectual Disabilities (PID) in campus life. Regular higher education students and students with intellectual disabilities will be able to follow their personal study path while enjoying campus life. People with intellectual disabilities will take courses fitting their aspirations and will be involved in teaching activities as life experts. As such they will teach higher education students. The delivered learning materials, training and dissemination activities may document and transfer these innovative practices to European universities and stakeholders in a sustainable way. The idea to open up campuses for students with intellectual disabilities comes from Thomas More, based in 'the charitable city' of Geel, Belgium. Geel is renowned for its system of family care for psychiatric patients. Since the middles ages already, patients with mental or/and intellectual disabilities have stayed and lived with families in the surroundings of Geel. Patients live with foster families, help in the households or with farming life. This inspiring history provided a quit natural context to allow the initiation and elaboration of this project. The main project objectives are: (1) Continued Education for students with intellectual disability on a Higher Education campus. (2) Integration of students with an intellectual disability in the teaching process for regular students and staff. (3) Making the campus accessible for people with intellectual disabilities. (4) Documenting and transferring inclusive concepts and methods. (5) A self-certification instrument to objectify the degree of inclusiveness towards People with Intellectual Disabilities. The five full partners of the IC Life project each worked with a number of organizations at the national level. In this way we realized this project together with twelve associated partners. Each partner held regular meetings on a national level with the associated partners of their country. This information was incorporated into the outcomes, the tools and the transnational project meetings. Adittionally, there was an advisory board with universities and organizations working with the target group. During the project, these organizations were invited for input twice. We realized as promised 6 outcomes, 5 events and 2 training sessions. It proved innovative indeed to work together amongst universities for creating inclusive campuses. Integrating people with intellectual disabilities as both students and teachers is not common. It was a unique approach to include the target group into the project activities. The intellectual outcomes are the following: - How to make a campus more accessible - How to organise a buddy system for students with intellectual disabilities - How to involve PID in teaching activities - How to organise work placement for PID - A screening Framework & ICL Monitor - A Change and Communication Plan For each outcome we created an easy-to-read version and a number of 'tools'. These are specific and compact manuals for developing activities at universities that want to work with PID. The main impact of this project consists of the improved collaboration between PID and regular campus attendees. This was objectified by the evaluations of the events and other project activities in mix settings. We hope this may be inspiring and useful to other Europan universities as well.