Enhancing inclusion of disadvantaged children by promoting intergenerational solidarity approaches in early childhood education and care systems

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the ECEC sector in several ways, including temporary and permanent facility closures, reduced demand for ECEC places and workforce challenges. Also it has impact...

Consistent with the EU's goals of supporting quality early childhood education and care provision for all, the LISTEN project has contributed to the greater inclusion of parents within the educational and local civil society communities, to support schools by introducing new and more innovative practices aimed at inclusive approaches, and, finally, to invest in teacher/educator training. For this reason, the goals of the project were: 1) To develop a high-quality early childhood education and care model that promotes an intergenerational solidarity approach method and actively involves local communities; 2) To increase the skill development and professionalization of ECEC staff, teachers and educators in the provision of innovative ECEC using an intergenerational solidarity approach for the social inclusion of children with migrant/socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds; 3) To promote solidarity initiatives and innovative learning environments using formal and non formal methodologies to increase dialogue and cooperation among key stakeholders and actors at local, national and community levels.

LISTEN project has produced the following results: - Project result report nr.1 “Online Training Curriculum in Intergenerational Solidarity Approach for ECEC SCHOOLS” aim to support the professional development of ECEC staff by creating an open curriculum containing specific online training modules and guidelines tailored to social inclusion needs. The development process was based on collaborative approaches that actively involved the target groups of ECEC school teachers, educators and headed to create an OER (Open Educational Resource). In all project partner countries, 172 teachers were trained through the content of the online curriculum and were asked to experiment in classrooms with the methodologies acquired during the training. - Project result report nr.2 “Parenting and Volunteers Toolkit to restore community synergies” that includes a set of non formal learning resources and activity kit developed for ECEC staff to turn into action project approaches outside schools involving parents and volunteers. The toolkit provides for a collection of 16 lesson plans for teachers to support cross-sectorial and multi-target exchanges stimulating curiosity and contributing to cognitive and social development of children; and others 16 lesson plans for volunteers that gives teachers an overall managing perspective of educational activities integrating volunteers. Within the PR2, 16 workshops were organized for parenting support in order to help the ECEC educational community to promote social inclusion through intergenerational approaches put in practice. - Project result report nr. 3 “Community empowerment actions and impact report” that includes two assessment tools to monitor and assess children’s acquisition of key competencies, active participation activities customized on children and volunteers impact; community empowerment guidelines and policy recommendations. - A dissemination and exploitation plan to ensure a high quality design of the overall project dissemination actions and developed for the local/national and international level. The plan supported consortium members to implement activities in line with the dissemination goals. - A quality assurance and evaluation plan to guarantee the achievement of project results and assess processes and results within the partners activities. - 6 multiplier events (one for each partner) to present project results achieved involving ECEC schools, civil society, organizations, volunteers, families and institutional bodies.