In a general context where questions of migrations and the social accompaniment of migrants in Europe is subject to tensions, the ELISSE project (E-Learning for Intercultural Skills in Social Education) aims to create a training primarily for social work students who will work in a multicultural environment after their studies. Based on the results of an exploratory work carried out during one year before the launch of the project, the ELISSE project will be based on two fundamental and innovative principles in social work training sector: 1. an internship experience in “southern countries” during which European students will be paired with students from the host country and students from other “northern countries”; 2. training modules provided partly at distance through the use of e-learning tools. The project was born from different needs identified, but the main ones can be summarized as follows: - the need for training of social workers who will work in a multicultural environment after their studies; - the need to improve the pedagogical support for international mobility in the countries of the "South" (in terms of form and substance); - the need of social work school to improve their skills in distance education. For the beginning, the ELISSE project targets 40 students enrolled in social studies in higher education (educators, social workers, etc.) from the 6 partner countries (Belgium, Portugal, Italy, Netherlands and Canada). These students are men and women aged between 22 and 25 years, enrolled in the 2nd or 3rd year training in university (or high school). During the ELISSE project experience, they will do their internship with students from the host country (Côte d'Ivoire, Senegal, Vietnam or Madagascar) and will benefit from pedagogical tools built especially for the project by the partners of the project: a total of 10 schools and universities from different places in the world will be involved. Ultimately, the idea of the ELISSE project is to promote the transformation of knowledge acquired at the theoretical level during their training and throughout the internship experience in a "Southern" organization to real intercultural competences. To achieve this, the ELISSE project team mobilizes two pedagogical modalities which represent real innovations in the social work sector: - the twinning of students from different countries in the same place of training. The idea is to place the participants in an optimal context of “perspective change” in relation to their cultural references. For example, in the case of a twinning between a Portuguese student and a Quebec student who will both be in a Malagasy NGO with a local student, each of the 3 participants will have to take a step aside to understand the perception of the other two. The crossing of 3 different perceptions, each one being the result of a specific context, will multiply the richness of exchanges and learning. - the distance learning. Here, the aim is to adapt the know-how relating to distance learning and the use of e-learning tools to support students during their internships in the “Southern countries”. The ELISSE project aims to develop tools and a “pedagogical process” that will put all the participants in the work with the objective of acquiring real intercultural skills for their future profession. At the end of the ELISSE project and the action-research approach that will support its implementation, an “intellectual output” will be created and will take the form of a bilingual training program (French / English), including a skills framework, the contents of the training modules, the pedagogical tools, etc. This training program, available on-line via a dedicated website, will be organized around the internship experience in “Southern countries” under the conditions set by the ELISSE program. It can be followed in parallel by the social work programs proposed in European schools and universities in order to obtain a credit specialization of ECTS in addition to the diploma in social work intervention. Ultimately, the rise in professional competence of future European social workers will contribute to the construction of a European social action more adapted to the mobilities that are upsetting our societies and their citizens.
The general context marked, paradoxically, by globalization and the art of living together, but also by the return to fundamentalism, exclusion and ostracism, the need to find a local identity of their own, has pushed the different actors of the ELISSE project to focus on empirical practices to stimulate reflection and participate in training in interculturality. The question of interculturality is becoming more and more acute in all countries, in professional fields and in several sectors of activity. The reception of migrants in all European countries with increasingly complex situations of precariousness challenge social workers who often lack the appropriate skills to understand and enter into a relationship of trust with people. The exploratory work carried out prior to the project has identified a certain number of needs expressed in the face of the limitations of working in a multicultural context: - the training of social workers using tools and modalities of action in a multicultural environment, - Make the internship experience a time to acquire valuable and transferable intercultural skills, - Improve and strengthen distance learning skills with the use of adapted tools. The analysis of these different needs identified has led to the identification of two interdependent principles of action: 1. an internship experience abroad as a support for intercultural training, 2. Modular hybrid training delivered at a distance thanks to e-learning platforms and face-to-face in the trainee's host country. These principles of action guided all the implementation work during the 3 years of the project launched in 2017. ELISSE is a human adventure, a research-action, rich in encounters and intercultural sharing. The potential of ELISSE is to rely on digital tools to offer modular training accessible in any professional context where questions of interculturality arise, in an interconnected world of cultural diversity. The project has brought together a multidisciplinary and cosmopolitan team that is the very test of interculturality. It is composed of teachers/trainers in social work, pedagogical engineers, teacher-researchers in human and social sciences, among others. This project, which brought together 4 continents (Africa, Europe, Asia, North America), 10 countries (Ivory Coast, Senegal, Vietnam, Madagascar, Belgium, Portugal, Italy, Netherlands, Canada, France), then 09 with the departure of Italy, has an international scope. This phase was a time of intellectual production and creation of pedagogical tools for students and teachers in social work. It produced the following results: - a training program taking advantage of the period of internship abroad for the acquisition of transversal skills around interculturality. - training tools linked to the training course to allow a rapid increase in skills and professionalization, - a skills repository to situate the expected skills, - a trainer's guide to allow any professional wishing to duplicate, - a project website, - a Youtube channel with testimonials, - several dissemination tools. The materials produced, which are in English and French, are mainly intended to prepare students before their departure, during their international internship and upon their return, so as to best integrate intercultural skills in the continuation of their training and their professional career. The student exchange flows between the different partners have had a considerable impact in raising awareness of intercultural facts and, above all, the need for training in order to acquire the skills to act in a multicultural context. This has resulted in a strong demand from students who were not part of the test phase and an integration of course modules in the initial training and practical training support even if the students do not go abroad. Also, field professionals from all sectors (health, education, etc.), through the webinars organized, have expressed the need to benefit from support to transfer the training contents and adapt them to their context. This is the first comprehensive training in the social work sector on interculturality and which considers interculturality as a set of skills. The benefits are therefore enormous, hence the objective of consolidating the work by applying for a European Certificate of Intercultural Competencies (CECI) and opening it to more encompassing themes such as social inclusion through a new project phase. For more details, please click here : http://elisse.itsra.net/