The concrete objectives of our project were to exchange and improve good practices and methodologies on working with parents on multilingual language promotion. We wanted to strengthen the cooperation between professionals and (low-educated) parents in early and (pre-)school education and thus contribute to a language-stimulating environment for young children (focus on the age 2,5-6 years). In addition, we wanted to focus on two key learning questions: 1) How can we deal with the growing multilingual complexity of our society? How can home languages be better integrated in the cooperation between parents and schools and how we can create a good balance between home language, school language and a multilingual environment? 2) How can we make a bridge between school and home? How can we offer parents tools to work at home, in the home language, towards a language-stimulating environment? By choosing participating partners from both academia and practice, we also wanted to connect theory and practice. In addition, as stated in the project description, we also intended to involve as many people as possible in our exchange, not only professionals but also students and parents themselves.
In 2018, Ligo Brusselleer was introduced to the "Thuis in Taal" (At Home in Language) approach by researcher Martine van der Pluijm (Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences). This acquaintance soon resulted in the integration of the approach under the name "Welkom in de Klas" in Ligo Brusselleer's Schools Project and a one-month job shadowing (funded within a KA1) in Rotterdam. These contacts were very inspiring for both parties on the one hand but also raised new questions around working with low-literate parents in a multilingual context. In addition, there was also a need for a more sustainable cooperation in order to share insights and good practices and to strengthen own initiatives. On the basis of the three-part question "how to work together with low-literate parents to stimulate children's multilingual language skills", Brussels and Rotterdam, together with the new, third partner Caritas Jeunes et Familles from Luxembourg (specialised in multilingual tools), joined forces for the "Together Strong in Languages" project.