Inter
Aktion
Did you know that around 8% of the European Union's population, which equals approximately 34 million inhabitants, were born outside of the EU? Unfortunately, many non-EU born adults seeking connection to the labor market, lack a high level of education, and young migrants are more likely to drop out of school and be at risk of poverty or social exclusion. With this project, we strive to support schools in their potential as hubs for integration and therefore the development of an inclusive society.
The BuddyMigrants project has two main objectives. Firstly, it aims to address the barriers that newly-arrived third country national families face when accessing social services such as education, healthcare, employment, and information. Secondly, it aims to promote inclusive environments that foster social inclusion, equity, and equality, and respond to the needs of the wider communities in the project countries.
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The project's priorities are to raise awareness of European Union common values and principles among newly-arrived TCN families, encourage their participation in democratic life, and help them overcome difficulties in actively engaging and participating in their communities. Additionally, BuddyMigrants aims to develop the social and intercultural competences and critical thinking of teachers, parents, and children, and offer opportunities for participation in social and civic engagement through formal and non-formal learning activities.
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The project achieves its objectives by developing a tailor-made pedagogical toolkit for the inclusion of intercultural dimensions into the formal learning process, including a curriculum for the development of intercultural competences of teachers, the creation of inclusive local groups of families for social inclusion, support for local actions by these groups, and the creation of a wide network consisting of local groups for strengthening peer learning.
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Impact
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Increased capacities of teachers in integrating the intercultural and global citizenship dimension in their teaching approach and in teaching in multicultural classrooms
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Increased knowledge of EU native parents and students about inequalities and cultural diversity
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Increased mobilization of parents and students in actions which promote social inclusiveness
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Increased capacity of project partners to work transnationally to provide quality intercultural and global citizenship education
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Project Results:
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1) Pedagogical toolkit and curriculum for teachers - A handbook for teachers, which will be a collection of
a) scientific publications, of official policy and technical documents on education
b) educational courses, tool-kits, platforms and portals,
c) best educational practices,
d) educational projects, programmes, and initiatives, organised in a proper way and presented in a comprehensive, coherent, and consolidated way. The indicative thematic areas are intercultural education, global citizenship education, human rights education, education for sustainable development.
A first draft of the curriculum, ready to be piloted, which will consist of 4 parts
1) analysis of the theoretical concepts, terms, and methodologies and pedagogies related to intercultural and global citizenship education and teaching in multicultural and multilingual classrooms;
2) information (evidence-based and theoretical) about topics such as migration and mobility of people, social inclusion and protection, discrimination,
inequalities and equal opportunities;
3) learning course whose objective is to build the competences of teachers on the above topics (train-the-teachers),
4) Activities to carry out at school and resources for teachers, i.e., objectives, step-by-step
The first three parts will be common to all project countries. The last part, i.e., the activities, will be tailor made to each country, considering the specific education systems and the priorities and capacities of the partners.
The final version of the curriculum, which will be the final curriculum after the piloting and the incorporation of feedback provided by the involved teachers, who are expected to "co-create" the content.
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2) Online educational platform - This work package results in the development of an online educational platform with the following functionalities:
1) the new curriculum for teachers, consisting of 5 parts
2) a section with content/results from the activities of the curriculum that the teachers implemented with their students
3) a section with content/results from the local actions implemented by the local networks
4) a section to enable the registered visitors to interact and contribute with new content, like forums, blogs, social networking, digital libraries, sharing and authoring tools and chat rooms. This section will enable the interaction between
local networks' members, between local networks in the same country, and between local networks across countries.
5) other functionalities which can be added upon feedback by teachers and parents.
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Along with the desktop version of the platform, the development team of the project will make the platform's content and structure transferable to mobile phones through a mobile application. Both the "desktop" version and the mobile application will be freely and openly accessible to all interested users.
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3) Inclusive local networks and local actions - The main results of this Work Package refer to the establishment of local networks of EU native and TCN (third country national) parents who will be meeting regularly, share their concerns, learn from each other, and subsequently build friendly relationships based on mutual respect of different cultures.
Consortium
The consortium that develops this project consists of 6 partners, from 5 countries:
Blenders (Belgium)
The Square Dot Team (Belgium)
Synthesis Center for Research and Education (Cyprus)
Drustvo Za Razvijanje Prostovoljnega Dela Novo Mesto (Slovenia)
InterAktion (Austria)
Innovation Hive (Greece)
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Project Number: 2022-1-BE02-KA220-SCH-000086016
Project Duration: 1.09.2022 - 31.08.2024
