According to UNESCO, comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) is a curriculum-based process of teaching and learning about the cognitive, emotional, physical and social aspects of sexuality. It aims to equip children and young people with knowledge, skills, attitudes and values that will empower them to realize their health, well-being and dignity; develop respectful social and sexual relationships; consider how their choices affect their own well-being and that of others; and understand and ensure the protection of their rights throughout their lives. While the benefit of CSE has been widely demonstrated, according to UNESCO there is limited information on the impact of CSE curricula on already marginalized groups, including young people with physical and/or cognitive disabilities, and suitable and effective methodologies for this target group should be further investigated. In this context, the use of creative methods such as role-playing and theater games have proven to be effective in educating young people and even more with young people with intellectual disabilities since according to researchers methods that are based on modeling, role-play, rehearsal, and practice skills can be quite useful for improving the skills of individuals with intellectual disabilities. (Schaafsma, 2014).The outbreak of COVID-19 impacted the sexual education of (intellectually disabled) teenagers in a variety of ways, making this project particularly timely: on one hand, by closing schools, sexuality education is receiving less or no attention throughout the world. If there is an opportunity to take classes online at home, sexual education is often not a priority. (Rutgers, April 2020) Additionally, according to recent reports from Europol and Unicef, the increased use of the internet due to the pandemic has heightened the risk of online sexual harassment of children, since spending more time online may increase their likelihood to come into contact with online predators and therefore they should be educated to recognize and prevent this risk. On the other hand, as COVID-19 forced schools across the country to abruptly close, many parents took on an additional role as teachers. As families spend more time together at home, parents have a chance to connect with their kids and delve into sexual health in a meaningful and more intentional way and should be supported to do so. (Feingold). To these challenges intends to respond the INCLUDE project which will design, implement and evaluate: (1) an inclusive sexual education curriculum for high-school students adopting the Universal design for learning (UDL) approach: a cognitive framework that focuses on removing barriers within learning environments by modifying curriculum, concepts, materials, and environments for all learners and abilities through the use of creative options and drama-based techniques. (2) a training for teachers, to upskill them providing the necessary competences to implement the programme and (3) drama-based resources and approach to adopt a whole-school approach in relation to sexual education, including the active involvement of parents/guardians/carers of students with disabilities. The objectives of the project are: Support teen-age students, including those with intellectual disabilities, to effectively achieve the core learning-outcomes of sexual education Support teachers and school support staff to be able to apply current practices in sexual education for their students through creative methods Support parents to play an effective role in sexual education of their children with intellectual disabilities Develop open educational resources The project will involve students, teachers, families and the general community to its activities in order to achieve its objectives. Moreover, through the multiplier events of the project we expect to involve at least 189 local and international stakeholders to the activities of the project. The partnership is consisted of experienced and newcomers to the Erasmus+ project and of organizations with a different professional background and experience, ensuring the multidisciplinary approach and implementation of the project. MEH, the coordinator of the project, has experience in the management of Erasmus+ programmes and will work with ANS (IT), La Xixa (ES), InTouch (NL), KMOP Skopje (North Macedonia), RDPSEA (GR) and Social Policy Academy (GR).
The objectives of the project were: Support teen-age students, including those with intellectual, cognitive and functional diversity, to effectively achieve the core learning-outcomes of sexual education Support teachers and school support staff to be able to apply current practices in sexual education for their students through creative methods Support parents to play an effective role in sexual education of their children with intellectual diversities Develop open educational resources Thanks to the outputs we produced along the lifetime of the project we could reach the desired objectives on our 3 target groups. We could assist secondary students, including those with intellectual diversities, in achieving the core learning outcomes of sexual education and gaining appropriate knowledge and skills. We helped teachers and other school staff to use innovative techniques to teach students about sexuality and encourage learner engagement. We also assisted parents to effectively engage in sexual education for their children and to collaborate with schools to achieve great learning outcomes in this area. In a nutshell, we succeeded in creating free and accessible educational tools that can improve the welfare and social inclusion of vulnerable populations
We initially applied for this project to facilitate the access to sexual education and address the needs of vulnerable people such as children with intellectual, cognitive and functional diversity. Indeed, we had found with our research at the time that young people with intellectual diversity have limited access to sexual health education whereas this education is essential for them to acquire the knowledge, abilities, attitudes, and values they need, build respectful relationships with others, think about how their decisions affect both their own and others' well-being, understand and ensure the protection of their rights throughout their lives. Besides, we also found that whole-school approaches, parental and teacher involvement and training facilities have the greatest influence on sexual education when combined with school-based programming. For this reason, we also wanted to target schools and parents with this project. Moreover, we applied for this project in 2020 during the COVID 19 pandemic which had a range of effects on the sexual education of intellectual, cognitive and functional diversity youth due to school closures and lack of online opportunities in the field of sexual education. The pandemic also increased the risk of children being sexually harassed online and this is why we wanted to not only educate children about this risk and teach them how to recognise and avoid it but also encourage parents to spend more time at home together so that they may engage in meaningful conversations and break the taboo with their children about sexual health and desires.