The ESCUTA Project focuses on finding new pedagogical forms that support the acquisition and development of essential skills by university students. The Project adopts as its transversal methodology the proposal of the American organization CASEL, which demonstrated that the development of emotional and social skills (SEL) should be done in a supportive environment (collaborative networks) for students. The project is framed by the fact that academic learning is generally fostered in an educational logic without space for students to dialogue and build with teachers the curriculum themes that can be developed through collaborative and experiential approaches in social contexts of proximity; this, among other factors, does not help to reverse either the low participation and political activism of the students, or their diminished spirit of social entrepreneurship and voluntary working time in NGO’s. It was important to ensure that the project was conceived in a logic of transnational partnership between public university entities and NGO’s, supported by a synergistic articulation between formal spaces of university education (integrating contexts of young adults, and potential testing of non-directive methodologies) and structures that function as platforms for social support, among others, to vulnerable communities (therefore, interested in developing local social innovation projects): Kairós (candidate organization) and University of the Azores (UAc) and Universidad Extremadura (UEX) and CLAS Sol Violette (France) and EBR (Spain). ESCUTA sets 7 objectives, which are interrelated with its direct participants (40 university students from different universities in 2 EU countries, and 5 staff members from participating organizations) and indirect participants (4 university professors and 6 NGO technicians). As central Objectives we have: ‘to increase civic literacy and the capacity and spirit of social entrepreneurship of university students throughout their training cycle’; ‘to develop a wide range of skills, not only focused on the dominant basic skills, but also on essential skills for those students’; ‘promote the socio-institutional and citizen awareness conditions capable of supporting the structuring and dynamization of the “Transnational Network of Young Volunteers and Social Entrepreneurs”’. And the following Activities: Training Workshop on the mentoring function -"Volunteering and Young Social Entrepreneurship", aimed at university students; Educational-scientific monitoring of the design of Social Currency Projects to be conceived and implemented by the university students in vulnerable communities; "Mobility" visits between UAc and UEX university students; Information Sessions for students of 2nd and 3rd Cycles of Public Schools, conducted by (volunteers) university students; Training Workshop - "Methodology of Local Social Innovation Projects" and "Impact Assessment on Local Social Innovation Projects", for university teachers and NGO technicians; Tutorial Workshop "Volunteering and Young Social Entrepreneurship", for NGO technicians. With regard to the central Results of ESCUTA: 2 Social Currency Projects implemented, with subsequent realization of "Transnational Social Currency Fair"; Created Transnational Network of NGO’s for Volunteering and Youth Social Entrepreneurship available on Website, with public access to APP for circulation and sale on a network of goods/services resulting from Social Currency and Scholarship Projects for Young University Students in the mentoring role and NGO’s as tutors; Information Sessions for students aged 10/15, covering themes like: "Volunteering, Active Citizenship, ODS, Social Entrepreneurship and Local Coins"; 4 Intellectual outputs validated by direct participants (students, teachers and technicians) for benchmarking and public access through Websites of participating organizations. ESCUTA is expected to have a positive impact, in particular, in terms of civic participation by university students, their social initiative and entrepreneurial capacity, and the improvement of key competences for their present and future lives; but also, that NGO’s become more technically and organizationally qualified and better prepared to host young volunteers and innovative social projects; and also, universities better prepared to face the educational challenges ahead and with a better curriculum proposal and pedagogical approach to offer to their students. Finally, as possible long-term benefits, the possibility of testing common solutions resulting from the sharing of educational, social and cultural knowledge and experiences produced in different European countries should be stressed, and united in a cross-cutting purpose of affirming European citizenship.
- Strengthen the spirit of volunteering and the capacity for initiative and social entrepreneurship of young university students (civic literacy), with a view to creating more ecologically resilient, socially fairer and economically more sustainable communities, based on the organization in Network of socio-institutional conditions (NGO) for this purpose; - Develop socio-emotional skills with university students, highlighting their importance to them and the educational community as a whole, in terms, for example, of school success, job satisfaction, participation in voluntary actions and social integration; - Develop technical, scientific, organisational and interpersonal skills with both the technical staff of the NGOs and the scientific staff of the partner universities, in the fields, for example, respectively, of community work and the evaluation of experimental social projects, and the use of participatory and active pedagogical methodologies and teaching methods centered on 'work by project'; - Promote the integration, within the framework of current university educational action, on the one hand, ofnon - "mainstream" thematic domains (e.g. transformative economies: solidary, feminist, ecological) and, on the other hand, the practices and organizational contexts of NGOs as central spaces for, for example, the materialization, via ‘fieldwork situated’, of the "new" pedagogical skills acquired by university students in the classroom; - Strengthen the creation of synergies and partnership relations between NGOs from different countries, and those with international universities, increasing the capacity (along with the recognition, when justified) of 'social innovation' of those (new responses to local unmet social needs)
The conception and consequent application of the ESCUTA project came from the basic idea that Universities in dialogue with NGOs can join specialized areas of knowledge to face complex and interconnected challenges with the community (in particular, local) and effectively fulfil its missions and objectives. The Project took on an experimental action logic in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG.4/Quality Education) and the Europe 2020 Strategy, within the framework of what the OECD has been calling 'social and emotional skills' (CSE) increasingly seen as crucial for individuals to become entrepreneurs, able to manage complex information, think autonomously and creatively, and use resources (including digital) intelligently and be resilient. In this sense, it was understood that in the current teaching and learning process it is necessary (re)integrate in the construction of "knowledge", the integrated development of not only cognitive ("intellectual") skills, but also social and emotional skills. A shift from teaching to learning is necessary - participatory and active (and, whenever possible, emancipatory). To this end, in line with the proposal of the American organization CASEL, it was assumed that CSE learning should be done in an integrated support environment, involving a collaborative network supported by Universities (UAc and UEX) in direct articulation with NGOs (Kairós, EBR and Sol Violette) and all these entities with their various communities of proximity. A Network available to foster various contexts and environments of emancipatory teaching-learning that included "multiple intelligences" and that was aware that "there is no global social justice without global cognitive justice".