F.R.I.E.N.D.E.S.K. is a project aimed at reducing social exclusion of children 0-6 years old coming from marginalised contexts through the implementation of an innovative ECEC (Early Childhood Education and Care) model. The project brings together 8 partner organisations with longstanding experience in the field of social inclusion and children education, with the aim to create and test an integrated system where teachers and experts involved in ECEC systems could work together for providing children households with an inclusive and all-encompassing service. More specifically, F.R.I.E.N.D.E.S.K. consists of four core phases: 1) a context analysis and benchmarking focused on best practices across the European countries partners on the main reasons of social exclusion affecting households with children aged between 0 and 6 years old; 2) a transnational activity for external teachers and experts who work within the ECEC systems; 3) a period of experimentation of the Friendesk Model consisting on physical spaces hosted by schools and aimed at providing parents with any information, contact, treatment or other services offered; 4) a launching of an Integrated Web Platform useful to deliver training contents to experts ECEC. Considering the way in which ECEC systems are dependent on the responsible authorities at the highest level, which may be Ministries or Regions or Municipalities, at the end of the experimentation F.R.I.E.N.D.E.S.K. will try to engage public authorities in order to create guidelines improving on how to tackle child poverty and social exclusion through measures such as family support and benefits, quality childcare and early-childhood education.
The overall objective of F.R.I.E.N.D.E.S.K. was to reduce the social exclusion of children aged 0-6 from marginalised backgrounds through the implementation of an innovative ECEC (early childhood education and care) model. Specifically, the project designed, piloted and tested the Hub&Spokes Model as an integrated system in which teachers, educators, health workers and volunteers can work together to provide the children's families with an inclusive and all-inclusive service. The specific objectives were: 1) to intervene on the cultural and social deprivation of children and families living in more precarious conditions due to low income, recent immigration, job loss, illiteracy, psychological fragility and geographical marginality; 2) to increase the professional skills of educators, experts in ECEC systems through training; 3) to create an 'educating community' consisting of kindergartens and primary schools, health services, hospitals, no-profit organisations, dealing with children's rights, education and social inclusion.
F.R.I.E.N.D.E.S.K. is a 36-month strategic partnership, which started in September 2019 and ended in August 2022, aimed at reducing the social exclusion of children aged 0-6 years from marginalised backgrounds through the implementation of an innovative Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) model based on two fundamental pillars: (a) a Hub&Spokes Model understood as an integrated system of innovative services to support families of children 0-6 years from disadvantaged backgrounds in order to support processes of information, counselling, inclusion and (2) a series of Spokes, understood as competence centres, including the Training Spoke specifically addressed to ECEC educators and experts in order to enhance the skills and competences of professionals working in the field of early childhood education and care. The project brought together 8 partner organisations from Italy, Spain, Greece, Romania, and Bulgaria, with long-standing experience in the field of social inclusion and early childhood education, in order to create and test such an integrated model in which ECEC teachers and experts can work together to provide an inclusive and all-inclusive service to children's families.