The topic of social inclusion is one which has a true relevance to communities facing the issue EU today. Our partnership was formed to create a project that would delve into this subject and aim to uncover new practices and approaches that can be shared in our schools, communities and Europe as a hole. Our schools met with the goal to create a project to identify and work on a number of different and innovative social inclusion approaches. Our schools all identified with the need to spread knowledge and best practices about social inclusion and to create a platform on which our students could work on the subject and uncover some best practices that could be eventually transferred into classrooms and communities. We also wanted to address those students who are at risk of ESL as a result of exclusion and discover ways and methods to better involve them in school life, increase their motivation and develop their attitudes and well being. To study the topic of social inclusion each partner has identified their specific strength or point of view related to social inclusion approaches which will in turn make up the main knowledge well of the project. The project will have approx --- participants over the course of the two years. Participants will take part in 5 LTTs organised in each partner school. These LTTs will form the back bone of project and provide the sharing and learning by doing environment to engage our students and teachers to study and research this topic. The 5 LTTs will be based on the 5 social inclusion approaches that our partners have identified: - Using national languages as a means to break down barriers, increase tolerance and understanding and learn about other cultures. -Innovative teaching methods to motivate those at risk of early school leaving, ethnic minorities and academically challenged. -The promotion of various activities destined to create a common ground for inter-generational and intercultural learning. -The use of animals and how they can bring these new members together through activities. -Using a hands on approach to create learning environments based around the production of crops and the cooking of food as a means to increase the opportunity of social inclusion. Community inclusion surveys will be undertaken in each community prior to each LTT. Each survey will give an insight into local communities and their attitudes towards social inclusion. The surveys will then be presented and shared during the LTTs with the students able to analyse and compare their findings from around Europe. Each LTT will also have two workshops on the approaches of that LTT. The workshops will provide a platform for sharing and learning of new approaches related to social inclusion. The knowledge learned from these workshops will be transferred to classrooms and communities and aid in the development of greater awareness and strategies related to social inclusion. The approach that the project is taking to social inclusion is unique and will offer knowledge and expertise that can be shared across many different platforms. The 5 approaches of the partner schools are innovative and will cover a large range of subjects and topics insuring that the results will be able to be used by a wide range of organisations who are currently dealing with social inclusion issues. The Social Inclusion Handbook will provide information and knowledge on each of these approaches and by its nature will be highly disseminatable as an online file or printed and used in schools and classrooms. The results of the community inclusion survey will give an insight into our communities and their attitudes towards the issues facing social inclusion. The 25 surveys (5 surveys per LTT) will provide information which the students and teachers can take into account when creating the Social Inclusion Handbook and when dealing with minorities int heir communities and schools. The context for the project was formed when the partners met to discuss what issues are facing our schools. Dealing with minorities and decreasing ESL were top of our list of concerns and we wished to develop a project to share information and combat these pressing issues that are prevalent in the EU. By addressing and researching these topics we aim to provide schools throughout the EU with added means to be able to deal with issues and find new solutions and innovative methods to solve them. We also hope to influence the teachers who are at the front line of these issues and provide them with tools and best practices that they can implement in their classrooms.
The topic of this project was decided based on the need that each partner school faced, whether it was an inclusion based on ethnic minority, linguistic minority or other forms. We aimed to provide an information package and tool to deal with challenges in social inclusion and suggest ways that this process can be done and that showed to be quite effective. The project has proved this mission to be successful. All partners of this project participated with being aware and agreeing to fulfil the project’s mission to “spread knowledge and best practices about social inclusion and to create a platform on which our students could work on the subject and uncover some best practices that could be eventually transferred into classrooms and communities”. Each partner proposed a form of inclusion that was in a way new, and in accordance with the needs and possibilities of each partner to apply maximum of their resources, skills and competences forming the most possible knowledge pool to share with other partners. The main way we educated and shared our skills were LTTs – we organized 5 of them, one was a virtual one due to the Covid-19 pandemic limiting us on our travel. We also had to deal with a loss of one of the original partners due to the overlap in their planning schedule – The Czech partner left the project at the very beginning. Also, for the reason of Covid-19 we had to apply for extension of the project period - originally a 2 years lasting project received an extension which we hoped would help us to make the travel for the last LTT possible. Unfortunately, this has not happened and we organized the last LTT in a form of virtual mobility. During the planning process of this project each partner identified one approach to social inclusion to be used as the main topic for their LTT. These were: - Using national languages as means to break down barriers, increase tolerance and understanding and learn about other cultures (Germany) - Innovative teaching methods to motivate those at risk of early school leaving, ethnic minorities and academically challenged (Czech Republic) - The promotion of various activities destined to create a common ground for intergenerational and intercultural learning (Portugal) - The use of animals and how they can bring these new members together through activities (Finland) - Using a hands-on approach to create learning environments based around the production of crops and the cooking of food as means to increase the opportunity of social inclusion (Denmark) Due to the fact the Czech partner has dropped out, we have decided to cover their topic as part of the Virtual mobility in a form of guest speakers from various NGOs that support inclusion at school level, inclusion of people that fell to the bottom of the societal hierarchy and inclusion of ethnical minorities, namely Roma minorities in Slovakia – the speaker on this topic was a researcher from Slovak Academy of Sciences. As part of each LTT students prepared surveys distributed in their local community to reflect the overall attitude (or knowledge of) for each of the topics (the virtual mobility had this survey part excluded) and to be used later during the LTT as a data set to analyze and offer an insight into the community where the students come from. This served as an interesting comparative tool at a European level and formed a stable structure basis for further discussion. Each LTT (including the virtual one) offered at least two workshops that served as an educational method for sharing the best practices on each of the LTT’s topics and as an educational platform for all participants. The guest speakers of the hosts prepared an informative agenda that expanded on the knowledge that the participants brought with them to this discussion forum. High importance was given to the transferability of these skills and knowledge to the classrooms in all participating schools and beyond that – to the communities. The newly gained information formed a gallery of approaches that social inclusion can take and served as a model to show the means every individual and/or community can take to ensure that there will be no member of the community left behind (ideally). To make sure that all these innovative approaches to inclusion can be shared with a wider audience than our participants community, we created a tangible result to this project – the Social Inclusion Handbook. We created it in the form of a downloadable e-book that can be found on our project dedicated social media and web page and can be easily shared with anyone interested. It will serve as a helpful tool to any classroom or outside-of-school activity and can be used by anyone free of charge and with encouragement. It clearly states that it is a product of a project financed by the EU and the Erasmus+ programme.