Integrated Holistic Approach to a Validated European Tool
Participating organizations
Lead partner: ECEPAA (Belgium)
Agrupamento de Escolas de Silves (Portugal)
CIEP ASBL: (Belgium)
CONNGI: (Italy)
Eurocircle Association: (France)
First Private School Leonardo da Vinci: (Bulgaria)MIR: (Norway)
The 2ndVocational High School of Katerini: (Greece)
CONTEXT & OBJECTIVES
There is a Buddhist story of some blind men and an elephant. It is a story of a group of blind men, who have never come across an elephant before and who learn what the elephant is like by touching it. Each blind man feels a different part of the elephant body, but only one part, such as the tusk. They then describethe elephant based on their partial experience. IHAVET stands for “Integrated Holistic Approach to a Validated European Tool” and it is grounded on this basic principle: we have partial information both as humans and, here even more important, also as organizations. We have decided to focus on one of the most impelling social problem European societies have to deal with: the social inclusion; particularly the social inclusion of disadvantaged people, especially migrants. Data on youth with migrant education dropout is dramatic: “early school leaving (ESL) rate of young people born outside of the European Union was, on average, more than double that of natives (25.4 percent compared to 11.5 percent)”. Thus, in line with the general policy of the Erasmus+ Programme, the aim of this proposal is to having Youth with migrant background education high dropout rate reduced (General Objective). 2As for the specific objective, we want to develop a tool that supports students with migrant background, parents and teachers/trainers/youth workers dealing with youth with migrant background.
NUMBERS AND PROFILES OF THE PARTICIPANTS
There will different kind of participants and their involvement will change according to the type of activity. We will have 210 participants, chosen randomly, that will answer to the questionnaire. Besides, we will also have other more 42 participants, chosen randomly as long as they respect the research design, that will take part to the focus group. As for the transnational meetings, we will have 2 members for each organizations (total 16 people) while for the short-term joint staff training event at Katerini (GR) it is planned to have 1 student and 1 parent will be involved as well as the 2 members of organizations and a professional trainer/facilitator (total 33 people). Finally, regarding the IHAVET validation process in which 350 participants will be asked to validate the toolkit, also in this case we will select randomly these 350 people as long as they have the requested features (students, parents, teachers/trainer/youth workers).
ACTIVITIES DESCRIPTION & METHODOLOGY
IHAVET plans several activities. Beyond the project management activities, the project plans to have the following activities:a) A research in which it is foreseen do administer an online questionnaire;b) A focus group with the target group of the project;c) A short-term training event;d) 3 transnational meetings;e) The development of a toolkit;the project will apply a range of different methodologies that will depend on the activities to be carried out.To begin with, we will apply the traditional Project Cycle Management in order to guaranty to smooth activities implementation. The research part, on the contrary, will use quali-quantitative methodology. While thequestionnaire to the students, parents and teachers and trainer/youth workers will be mainly with closed questions; the focus group will have a more qualitative approach with an open interview structure.Finally, the short term joint staff training will use more a not-formal and informal methodology
RESULTS TO BE ACHIEVED AND IMPACT
The project proposal is designed so as to achieve 3 results during the project implementation and 1 on its completion. The first result will be to having students with migrant background more involved in the education process by made them having the power to influence the decision about their education. The second result will make busy migrant parents, especially those coming from disadvantaged contexts and countries, having a more proactive attitude so that can help the education performance of their children.The last and final result to be achieved, which is also the one who mostly answer to the organizations’ needs, is to have provided teachers (in schools) and trainers/youth workers (in training and youth centers) with a a more mixed teaching/training approach to students with migrant background.IHAVET plans having different impacts: on participants thanks to the research, focus group and the training, on participants organizations through also the toolkit developed and on, finally, on the target group via the toolkit validation process and its dissemination.The project will impact at local level by contributing in reducing, in the long term, students with migrant background school dropout high rate. At regional level, the project will impact by making local councilor aware about the results achievedby the project. Finally, IHAVET will impact also at EU level thanks to the delivery of the translated version of the toolkit to the MEPs at Education Committee