The team of Tulip Foundation is involved in a new programme for exchange of experience and practices for support and participation of parents and families aimed at the best possible care for their children together with partner organisations from Europe. We named this programme EFFECTS and with its implementation we aim to find effective concepts for training and support for families. The leading theme in the programme is the question “What is “good” educational support and how can the needs of families best be met within a neighbourhood?” The programme includes getting to know and sharing of concepts and practices of working with children and families in European comparison.
Our partners are Diakonie Baden, Evangelische Hochschule Freiburg и BAG Familienbildung und Beratung e.V. in Germany, Udruga za rad s mladima Breza from Croatia, Everton Nursery School and Family Centre from The UK and Haro, riksorganisationen för valfrihet jämställdhet, föräldraskap in Sweden. The activities are co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Commission.
By realising the programme we plan to strengthen our network by discussing ideas and curricula as well as participating in the knowledge and experience of our partners concerning relevant transversal and multi-professional competences. The participating professionals represent institutions that range from non-formal-education and training to early childhood education, youth activities, higher education and vocational education and training to adult learning. We plan to visit best practice institutions and to discuss training concepts and non-formal education concepts to be able to train trainers and/or other professionals better, who work with families and youth, so that they will be more competent to strengthen parents to better support and educate their children. We are also looking for resource oriented, inclusive education and training concepts to integrate refugee families better in the neighbourhood, to strengthen them through participation and to find creative ways of non-formal education, to find ways of respectful intercultural dialogue and language acquisition, to combat discrimination and segregation. We are interested in best practice examples, institutions that cooperate with families from refugee backgrounds. All the partners work on curricula for educators and intend to use the new insights to re-evaluate, develop or/and improve the educators competences.
The practical implementation of the programme started in the end of 2016 with a study visit to Germany.
The last working visit for sharing experience in the frame of the EFFECTS project, co-funded by Erasmus+ programme of the EC, was organised by the lead German partner in Berlin in late June. The partners’ organisations came together to discuss and formulate their learning and recommendations. We have spent almost two years working with this group of highly motivated and knowledgeable colleagues from different organisations and countries discussing practices of common interest.
The leading question of the whole project was “What is “good” educational support and how can the needs of families best be met within a neighbourhood?”. The idea that brought us together was to share and discuss various practical concepts and good practice of district work in a European comparison.
After a series of study visits to Freiburg, Liverpool, Gothenburg, Sofia and Osijek, we got together in Berlin. The partner organisations shared their Impressions, results and recommendations at the end of two years intensive exchanges among them during study visits and conferences in all participating countries.
As usually the team of Tulip Foundation invited colleagues form other organisations working with children and families in Bulgaria to join us at the working visit to Berlin. Maryia Daneva from Samaritans Association in Stara Zagora, Raina Dimitrova from Health and Social Development Foundation in Sofia, Miroslava Madjarova from the NGO Club in Targovishte and Aleksandrina Valcheva from the Office of the Ombudsman of the Republic of Bulgaria, took part in the study visit.
The first three colleagues are engaged in the projects for setting up family centres in the respective communities. On the last day of our visit we visited together a family centre in Neukölln Berlin with the support of our good colleagues from the Social Youth Service Neukölln. We learned a lot about the concept and the activities for children and their families.
Another interesting visit was the one to the Fathers Centre in Berlin, where the Head manager Eberhard Schäfer told us a lot about the development of the role of fathers in Germany.
On 26 June we hold the closing conference of the EFFECTS project at the High School of Governance in Berlin. There is more information in the agenda for the event.
The last conference was closed with a special concert and emotional speeches, but the lasting partnership will develop over the next years.
