Therapy through Reading and Use of Story Telling

The project TRUST(Therapy through Reading and Use of Story Telling) involved 5 organizations from Romania, Belgium,Portugal and Bulgaria. TRUST project aimed to reduce the social exclusion of peop...

The objectives consisted in realising an empowerment co-creating educational model regarding reading and story telling for a minimum 60 learners from different social groups, in 22 months of the curent project, intervention on the social growing to fight deprivation of 105 beneficiars by the use of reading and Story Telling during 20 months of the project, enabling the 5 partner organizations to implement monthly activities of social inclusion and growing self-esteem for minimum 200 direct and indirect beneficiers during 22 months of the project.The project adresses to minimum 60 people, mainly from social groups at risk(12 *5 organizations) that are the direct beneficiers(learners) and also around 105 indirect beneficiers.(25*5 organizations). The project promotes the social inclusion , volunteering and lifelong learning principles by offering an alternative of education through reading and story telling activities.

Starting with the 4th month of the project, each partner provided monthly activities regarding reading and story telling with learners that worked in pairs with beneficiery. During the activities, each partner tried to organize sessions to promote personal development and increese of self esteem through diverse methods. The learners and beneficiary were encouraged to write themselves stories, poetry and the organizations helped with the publishing during the project time. There were organized practical workshops with handicrafts such as making bookmarks with recycled materials(ADAMM), painting t-shirts with project’s logo and name(Arh. Dositey), painting cotton bags for books(Form2you), making sensory books from recycled materials( Form2you). Each partner facilitated cultural outings to theater (ADAMM, Arhimandrid Dositey) or concert(Vatra Limburg), book launches (ADAMM, CRCE), book fairs(Form2you). There were facilitated activites together with writers, reading caffes, carusel of stories. ADAMM started a library in rural area. By the development of videos and audio stories,learning in information technologies was implemented for each partner target group. During the project was promoted a eco friendly attitude. Thus, we organized outdoor activities, the recycling of materials. There were developed also activities to develop each of the involved organizations, the involved members of the management teams with skills in Eu projects, international cooperation, organizational skills on local level, enlarging the number of potential partners.

The concrete outputs consisted in 1: Letters for my community- a book with stories, 2- Listen our voice- audio and video materials published on the project’s youtube channel/ project’a application, 2- Trust on your phone- application for mobile phones. For the first output, each partner made during the activities with learners and beneficiary one book(in printed and online version) with stories reflecting experiences from the participants life or the community’s life with reflections and recommandations for other people or for the community. It was also done a common book containing 2 stories, in English, from each partner, in online version. For the second output, a youtube channel was created for the project and there were uploaded 20 videos. It were realised also 32 audio stories, uploaded on the 3rd output, the mobile phone application named Trusty. The third result, the phone application was entitled Trusty and has section for videos, audio,books,pictures, video, miscellaneous. The materials can be found in Romanian, Bulgarian, Portuguese and English. There were organized 4 transnational learning activities(first in Iasi, Romania, second in Hasselt, Belgium and 2 were online) for the learners from the target groups. It took place 6 transnational meetings (the first meeting of the management teams online was proposed into the application as TPM) for establishing the prochedures, methologies and assure a good management for the activities. There were initialy planned 3 TPMs but, during the 2 LTAs, members of management teams accompanied the learners and organized a separate time with separate agenda to discuss issues of management.For dissemination , each organization organized a multiplier event. The project developed its own logo and a facebook page of the project was activated. Monthly activities regarding reading and story telling, personal development with the direct and indirect beneficiers took place. The launching of 5 books with stories, the viewings of 18 videos,32 audiostories are important results. We started up a media campaign to promote reading by using the frame on facebook “I read a book”. Having an international project with different groups(from Belgium, Romania, Bulgaria and Portugal) we had a generalization view of the specific problems, such as the discriminatory practices, the exclusion from work, the poverty, the domestic violence problems. The Story Telling Method was a participatory method in which each direct beneficiary into the project joined, coming with proposal, re-structured the method and evaluate it in accordance with the proposed and reached results. All the proposed activities focused on promoting reading together concept. Our learners read together during the organized monthly activities, they also read in pairs with their pair of beneficiars.