yMIND is a participatory innovative project with the support of the Erasmus + programme of the European Union (Initiatives for policy innovation – Social inclusion through education, training and youth – EACEA 05/2016) that promotes better social inclusion of newly-arrived migrant and Roma children and youth through comprehensive diversity education in school and community-based settings.
Who are we?
The project consortium brings together four partners from four EU countries (AT, BG, DE and GR) with vast expertise in education, prevention and social inclusion and long-term experience in international cooperation. Supported by 22 associate partners (eg, schools, migration and refugee support organisations, youth services and communities) we will learn from each other, exchange good practices, and test education models for gender equality, bullying/gender-based violence prevention and multi-ethnicity.
yMIND has been initiated by the SPI Forschung gGmbH (DE), and is collaboratively conceived and implemented with the Austrian Women’s Shelter Network (AT), the Health and Social Development Foundation (BG) and the ACTION SYNERGY S.A (GR), being the project co-ordinator.
What do we offer?
Starting from December 2016, over a period of two years yMIND will implement and upscale two good-practice training models interlinking the themes of diversity education, gender equality and bullying/violence prevention in 15 schools and six multi-ethnic community settings in the four countries and in addition to it throughout existing European networks.
For children and young people in schools and community settings we offer participatory workshops enhancing their social and diversity competence, community outreach and peer education interventions. Young learners from different ethnic and cultural groups, drawing on different social and personal preconditions will be able to explore and share their views on diversity, gender equality, discrimination, tolerance and learning from differences. Their needs related to equal chances in education and social inclusion will be voiced through creative works, published in a special booklet.
For teachers, pedagogues, social, youth, community and migration workers we offer method-training workshops, which will strengthen their capacity to conduct prevention and education work with children using participatory and child-centred methods. The themes will encompass diversity-competence, gender roles and equality, prevention of bullying and violence, implementing non-traditional learning methods and whole-school approach events.
Why do we do yMIND?
Our core aim is to support schools’ culture to open (further) towards multi-ethnicity, to build cohesive inclusive learning environments, to promote acceptance and respect towards differences. Our guiding notion is that empowering participatory involvement, whole-school approaches, and close cooperation among schools and grass-root communities can help to tackle the challenges of growingly diverse European education systems.