The “Empowering parents and families for active social inclusion and resilience” project is aiming to create awareness and empower parents by providing tools channelled towards improving their parenting knowledge, digital proficiency, courage, creativeness and resilience. This final objective will be achieved by direct involvement of educators and participating organizations who address the needs of parents and families in their every-day work. Therefore the primary target group of this project are adult educators working with parents/families in various contexts such as schools, adult education institutions or social care field. They share significant interests and expertise in practice and engage with participants with similar core values. Following the outbreak of Covid-19, which has affected both working and non-working parents and educators, what was considered a normal lifestyle, does not exist anymore as people have no choice but to succumb and adapt to a new way of life. The only effective way of communicating, working and schooling, has become the use of online tools. Families and educators are forced to delve into the techniques and new online tools. This has proven to be a big challenge for many families, especially parents that have challenges communicating with their children, language barriers, digital incompetency, balancing family and work life, and having problems involving in their children’s school and community. Another important factor are migration processes which are very different between the respective partner countries. European societies are becoming more exposed to diversity than ever before, where social inclusion gains more significance. Many societies are not prepared for these inevitable processes. Some countries might not welcome refugees but at the same time they are dependent on migrant workers. Thus their societies become culturally mixed. Migration processes can be daunting for some parents and families, exposing them not just to a new language, but also culture and tradition that can sometimes be entirely opposite from the one they are used to. Integration requires a great reorganization and readjustment which are followed by psychological discomfort and issues related to sense of identity. The project’s objective is to offer better support and to empower families, who are facing various challenges in different life stages. By sharing best practises from partner countries and developing professional competencies of trainers and educators, partners learn to recognize new tools and methods for preventing families dropping out from society and thus promoting social inclusion in a diverse way. Competent professionals can act as agents of parents’ full potential and enable their active participation in local communities and society. The project will have a cross-generational impact by focusing on supporting active parenting and empowerment of parents who are consciously involved in children’s life and act as role models for active citizenship. The project also addresses a modern challenge which is a need for cross-cultural skills among experts and today’s citizens of Europe. More diverse societies require more diverse and culturally sensitive competencies, both from individuals, public service providers and professionals in the parents/family support sector. Partners represent a variety of organizations such as NGOs (Greece and Norway), small, local association (Poland), adult education institution (Croatia), higher education institution (Finland), which makes an additional value of the partnership based on intersectoral cooperation. Diversity of experiences and background (political, economic, social and historical) from different parts of Europe will probably manifest itself in range of approaches to education, but also in the interpreting and organizing of the family unit in general conditions as in the event of a crisis. Thus the benchmarking activities will play an explorative and constructive role in this project. Major activities of the project will consist of 2 transnational project meetings and 5 international trainings for educators that will be held in each partner country. It will bring both tangible and intangible results, consisting of training materials, online documentary and higher competencies of educators in following areas: - use of applied theatre to stimulate learners´ creativity - empowerment through applied theatre techniques in the classroom - digitalization of social work - preventive and early stage work with families including migrant families - diversity in society and family - role of children’s rights in society.
The objectives of this project which are in conformity with this Erasmus+KA2 are listed as follows: 1. To engage educators with a focus on developing and Organizing training for the primary target group, which is the adult educators working with parents/families tools that will build on the competencies of trainers/educators and students from the social sector, for them to be able to offer better support for families in their everyday lives. 2. To collaborate and have direct involvement with educators at schools and adult institutions, in creating, self-assessment, and evaluation tools and adapting resources to promote the process of developing self-awareness, being physically and emotionally present, stress management, and effective communication. 3. To promote and exploit the transformational benefits of ICT, like benchmarking and sharing best practices from the field of family social services and thus learn from each other. 4. Cooperate and disseminate information about the project via adult education institutions and social care field. 6. Discover and exchange practice activities that will be used to develop new methods and modules for future services. 5.. To implement the final product within the respective partner countries and development of an open online resource that disseminates the important aspects of the results EN 65 In the EPSIR project, the partners have learned a great deal on the different family situations,challenges, service structures etc. in five different countries. The work that is done toempower parents ́ and children ́s resilience has been analyzed and discussed in versatile, multidisciplinary ways. It has also been really important to strengthen the competencies in ICT and also ERASMUS+ projects all in all. For individual participants of this project, the outcome has been significant way to build personal competence and resilience, ict-skills and language skills in order to implement better work with families in the future. The project consortium is very versatile compilation of different kind of organisations which has been both a strength to build different perspectives on the content, but also a challenge when the partners have to build common understanding without getting too deep into the field-specific topics..In this project there were no intellectual outputs, but very practical and useable material was shared during the international trainings. This material is a great help in disseminating the learnings of this project. When evaluating the cooperation of the project partners, the inconsistencies of the application, and the division of tasks and responsibilities. The communication has been respectful throughout the project even though there has been difficulties to keep up with some of the agreed deadlines. Some of the partners have planned to continue cooperation in future projects. Also the stakeholders who have took part in dissemination events have shared their interest to take part in future project applications.
Background: The whole world came to a total shutdown following the outbreak of Covid-19, this affected both working and non-working parents and educators, what was considered a normal lifestyle, did not exist anymore as people had no choice but to succumb and adapt to a new digitalized way of life. The only effective way of communicating, working, and schooling, was to resort to the use of online tools. Families and educators were forced to delve into the techniques and new online tools. This proved to be a big challenge for many families, especially parents that have challenges communicating with their children, language barriers, digital incompetency, balancing family and work life, and having problems communicating in their children’s school and community. Another important factor why we applied for this project was migration processes, which are very different between the respective partner countries. European societies are becoming more exposed to diversity than ever before, and digital communication to enhance and improve social inclusion becomes very relevant. It was observed that many societies are not prepared for these rapid digital processes and changes. It was learned that some countries face the challenges of welcoming refugees even though they are dependent on migrant workers. As societies become culturally mixed, the migration processes can be daunting for some parents and families, They are not only exposed to a new language, but also a culture and tradition that can sometimes be entirely opposite from the one they are used to. Integration requires a great reorganization and readjustment that is accompanied by psychological discomfort and issues related to the sense of identity. The “Empowering parents and families for active social inclusion and resilience” project was aimed at creating awareness and empowering parents by providing tools channeled towards improving their parenting knowledge, digital proficiency, courage, creativity, and resilience. This final objective was achieved by the direct involvement of educators and participating organizations that address the needs of parents and families in their everyday work. Therefore the primary target group of this project was adult educators working with parents/families in various contexts such as schools, adult education institutions, or the social care field. They shared significant interests and expertise in practice and engage with participants with similar core values. The needs addressed in this project are: Need for better techniques and tools to support and empower families, who are at risk of being marginalized due to diverse reasons. By sharing the best family support practices from each partner country and with better competencies of trainers and student, partners aim to have new tools and methods for preventing families from dropping out from society and thus promoting social inclusion in a diverse way. This project focuses on developing tools that will improve prior knowledge, skills and attitudes of the professionals and students of family support. The project will have a cross-generational impact by focusing on supporting active parenting and empowerment of parents who are consciously involved in children’s life and act as role models for active citizenship. The project also addresses a modern challenge which is a need for cross-cultural skills among experts and today’s citizens of Europe. More diverse societies require more diverse and culturally sensitive competencies, both from individuals, public service providers and professionals in the parents/family support sector.