BUilding skills in Schools though Training therapy Animals

The BUSTA project was conceived to address the growing need for education systems to evolve with the challenges of the 21st century. Recognizing the gap in traditional curricula, which often overl...

The primary objective of the BUSTA project is to revolutionize the educational landscape by integrating therapy animal training, thereby creating a framework that has real-world impact and relevance for students. The specific goals are fourfold: Empowering Teachers: To enhance teachers' ability to foster student talents through innovative pedagogy, promoting active participation, inclusivity, and psycho-affective connections. Student Development: To bolster students' capacity for embracing challenges, nurturing curiosity, and co-designing creative solutions. This includes leveraging digital tools for knowledge exchange and generating public-facing online content. Skill Acquisition: Focus on developing crucial life skills in students, such as active citizenship, critical thinking, self-regulation, empathy, and effective communication. Cross-Cultural Exchange: To foster a stronger sense of European citizenship through collaboration and exchange with partnering countries, enhancing global competence and cultural understanding. Through these objectives, the BUSTA project seeks to prepare students not just for academic success, but for meaningful, engaged participation in a rapidly changing world.

In the BUSTA project, we implemented a series of structured activities to achieve our objectives. A significant part of the project involved creating three key deliverables: 1. Documentary Movie: This documented the project's journey, highlighting the impact and learning experiences. 2. Impact Report: A comprehensive report detailing the project's outcomes, lessons learned, and future recommendations. 3. BUSTA Guidelines for schools, for therapy animal organizations and for disability associations. During the project, 3 Learning and Training Events (LTE) were implemented. One in Bulgaria (4-7 October, 2023), one in Lithuania (29 November to 2 December, 2022) and one in Belgium (25-28 September, 2023). These activities were strategically planned and executed to ensure the project's success and to achieve its aim of integrating innovative educational practices with real-world impact. Also four Multiplier Events, held in Klaipeda, Sofia and Brussels, were designed to disseminate the project's results, share best practices, and extend its impact beyond the immediate participants. To produce the main outputs ongoing project management was essential for coordinating activities, managing resources, and ensuring the smooth execution of the project plan. Also three Transnational project meetings were implemented, which were pivotal for strategic planning and collaboration. Meetings were held in Brussels (11-12 May 2022), Sofia (2-5 May 2023), and Klaipeda (7-8 February 2024), allowing partners to discuss progress, share insights, and plan future steps.

The BUSTA project yielded several concrete outputs and results, each playing a crucial role in achieving and showcasing the project's impact. Documentary Movie: This was a key output, capturing the essence of the project. The documentary showcased the journey of the participants, the learning process, and the real-world impact of the therapy animal training. It served as a visual and engaging medium to communicate the project's achievements and the experiences of those involved. Impact Report: A comprehensive impact report was produced, detailing the project's outcomes, methodologies, and lessons learned. This report provided a thorough analysis of the project's effectiveness, its influence on participants, and its contribution to educational innovation. It also included recommendations for future initiatives, ensuring that the learnings from the BUSTA project could be applied to similar endeavors. BUSTA Guidelines for schools, for therapy animal organizations and for disability associations. The guidelines consists from 3 important parts: Guidelines for integrating skill-building in schools through animal training for schools (PR3.1), guidelines for integrating skill-building in schools through animal training for therapy animal associations (PR3.2), and guidelines for integrating skill-building in schools through animal training for associations for disabilities (PR3.3). These outputs not only demonstrated the tangible results of the project but also ensured that its benefits and learnings could be shared, inspiring future projects and advancements in educational methodologies. Besides the three above-mentioned 'hard' results, project also brought other results such as number of persons who have acquired new qualifications, knowledge and abilities through LTT, multiplier events and dissemination activities. It has been calculated that in LTT have participated 40 persons, in multiplier events y persons and approximately 40.000 persons have been reached during dissemination activities. Project also reached one more result that was not planed but gave the project value added as the qualitative data was gathered with discussed qualitative written forms, reports, which overall was published in a Klaipeda University scientific journal “Bridges” (https://e-journals.ku.lt/journal/TBB/article/2911/info , https://doi.org/10.15181/tbb.v91i2.2551 ). This gave much bigger and long-lasting effect on spreading project results among target groups.