Por un Pirineo Inclusivo

Our common objective (REPV and FCA) was first and foremost to provide a better understanding of the issues, practices and professionals in each field: Environmental Education vs Autism. We had sev...

Our common objective (REPV and FCA) was first and foremost to provide a better understanding of the issues, practices and professionals in each field: Environmental Education vs Autism. We had several objectives: - To specifically enhance the skills of those involved in environmental education in order to take account of autism in the context of their nature-related activities. - To reaffirm that environmental education in the Pyrenees must offer inclusive activities and to raise awareness among professionals of how best to welcome people with disabilities (physical, psychological, social, etc.) more generally. - Enable links to be established between structures in each field to generate activities, in particular for quality education, reducing inequalities, promoting the link between health and the environment, etc. To achieve these objectives, we have planned the implementation of actions that have brought together professionals and players in the two fields (Environmental Education vs Autism) to work together on the design and production of training sessions, the teaching guide and the promotional films.

All the planned activities were carried out. The method adopted for the project as a whole was to get the project's various target audiences (environmental educators, autism stakeholders (specialised educators, families and autistic people) to work together, depending on the activities. Working together in this way ensures a high level of ownership of the products and enables skills to be transferred. The project's activities can be presented in 3 categories reflecting the chronology of the project: - Time spent meeting and working together to get to know each other's problems better. These took place at the start of the project and enabled the partners to familiarise themselves with the respective issues, to start transferring knowledge and skills and to define the methodological frameworks for the planned productions. - Specific production and training sessions. At the heart of the project, a cooperative group was set up to draw up the teaching guide and roll out the training courses. - Time for inclusive activities. At the end of the project, activities to accompany autistic people in nature, and to promote these moments through videos.

The project has resulted in a number of concrete achievements: - The design and production of a 60-page Nature and Autism guide offering an intervention methodology for a connection/reconnection to nature, keys to understanding autism, and 11 educational activities adapted to different autistic audiences. - 4 training sessions (2 in France, 2 in Spain) attended by 91 professional educators, mainly from the environmental education sector but also from the special education sector. - The production of 4 videos promoting 4 Nature and Autism holidays for autistic people (adults, families and young people). Other qualitative results: - A greater concern for inclusiveness in the broadest sense for professionals trained in the "Nature and Autism" specificity: A concrete example illustrates this: Video productions were systematically dubbed with subtitles to make them more accessible to people with hearing impairments. - The creation of an initial directory, for each region, of organisations that work with autistic people and are potential partners for environmental education professionals.