The Partners, agreeing that Culture, Relation and Motivation are important elements to foster a social integration at European level, want to contribute, through the innovative project “Oltre il Giardino – Social Inclusion Observatory”, with an active and aware participation, to improve life quality level of a target of people with social exclusion and less qualified skills. Thanks to the creation of special activities aimed to acquisition of self-awareness, the fruition of the cultural heritage and environmental protection and care, keeping in mind beauty and origin of European historical gardens, the Project wants to valorise, promote and concretize a process of social inclusion. This process could be productive, even at work, in overcoming the discomfort with and through the fundamental combination of preventive and continuous activities for monitoring the status of the disease, also to develop skills and practical-digital ability of the target identified, keeping in mind gender equality and with the involvement of local/international institutions creating an effective network of exchange of good practices between the Partner countries belonging to the lower Mediterranean basin (Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal). The project consists of an innovative biennial path in Europe addressed to women, young adult, migrants with social problems and school dropouts between the ages of 18 and 65 and over 65 and divided into theoretical-practical thematic modules/formats that provide: - definition of a questionnaire to be administered to an identified qualitative focus group; - creation of a multilingual European platform to interview people profiled by the project, with a view to increasing participation through strategies that increase awareness; - pilot training course for the management and maintenance of historical parks and gardens in an eco-friendly environment, intended for the target focus identified by the project and for people over 65, with production of documentation relating to “best practices”, with a view to social and participative inclusion, respecting gender equality, through effective orientation and motivation to develop and/or improve practical-manual skills and abilities; - visits to historical parks and gardens. Recent studies have confirmed the importance of acquiring tools aimed at knowledge meaning of environmental care for people with social difficulties and marginalized people. In this regard, among the project purposes, an interesting aspect is aimed at making the historical garden accessible and easily usable for the orientation of aware staff, prepared for its maintenance and for carrying out the activities, promoting the opportunity for orientation of multipurpose figures who, at the same time, will participate in practical upkeep of a historical garden, interacting with it and, at the same time, acquiring skills also at an organizational/managerial level; - creation of manuals and guidelines aimed at transferring the project results to other similar realities and contexts; - statistical and social research that collects the data emerging from the project experimentation. The project is based on close collaboration and interdisciplinarity between the four European partner countries: Spain, Portugal, Greece and Italy. The results expected from the project include the identification of common guidelines within the framework of reproducible and versatile best practices, including several realities, through the various activities proposed at national and international level. These results will be widely disseminated through a specially designed multilingual European platform; an app with content similar to the platform, for maximum dissemination and awareness; a manual with guidelines emerging from project experimentation and scientific research between partners with different European reference standards; the different online and offline media, to make that standards public, recognizable and replicable on a European scale. The impacts will be diversified on the basis of various activities proposed and all meetings and events are going to be open to the public and promoted through online and offline circuits. The expected results aim at a positive and concrete confirmation of the new theoretical and practical skills reached by the participants in the Project knowledge, increasing and consolidating target group’s self esteem, locally, regionally, European and internationally.
The main objective that the Project aimed to achieve is the improvement of the living conditions of people (target group) experiencing, in Europe, similar situations of marginality and socio-economic exclusion. At the same time, the proposed work has addressed sub-objectives, each of them representing a relevant step of the pathway towards the improvement of the beneficiaries’ lives. In particular, the Project design was meant and implemented to allow the members of the target group to: - actively participate to their own qualitative improvement of life conditions; - acquire knowledge and skills on environmental care, focusing on the Historical Gardens and the cultural patrimony, aiming at fostering a common sensibility towards the ecosystem and passing on this patrimony; - acquire digital skills, including those referring to the active job search through social channels and using European tools such as the Europass; - offer their own contribution to the implementation of the social statistical research, as relevant methodological approach and important content for the project partners and for those organizations which will disseminate and use the Project outputs available through the social channels and the project website.
The project considered two different realities and their needs: on one side, the historical gardens, their history and beauty and their great social value, part of the cultural patrimony of a Nation and object of environmental care, on the other side the social-statistic research as main tool to investigate and support the project actions. Therefore, the project was able to combine opportunities and needs, making available what the historical gardens can offer to those experiencing situations of social distress. In detail, the partners identified the special needs through the Social Research given to workshops’ participants and to a representative sample in the partners’ countries: women victims of violence with children and without a job or employability skills, adults who dropped out school, unemployed migrants, over 65 no more at work and not used to technological innovations. The answers stressed that social inclusion and economic autonomy require a job, good skills and cultural competences, what the project activities in the historical gardens offered to the beneficiaries in order to foster the acquisition of environmental care competences, social participation and inclusion and to improve employability skills.