v Dissemination event in Berlin

A dissemination and kick-off conference “Newcomer at primary school? Social learning in the classroom and all-day in primary schools“ was held by SPI Forschung on 14 November 2018 in cooperation with the Judith-Kerr Grundschule (Europe schools Berlin, conference host) and the Regional Further Training Unit (Verbund 3) of the Berlin senate for education, youth and family.

Participants from six Berlin schools, the school supervision unit, the regional further training unit and the school psychology and inclusion counselling centre from city district Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf discussed together with the yMIND partners the project core themes: social learning, bullying and violence prevention, gender and gender equality as well as diversity and respect in school.

The main product, the booklet “Drop the label” was launched, two teachers who were engaged in piloting of Good Practice I delivered insights into the practical implementation of the diversity training model. The external evaluator Colin Isham offered an input:  “yMIND – an evidence-based approach”

At same time the upscaling of yMIND in Berlin schools was kicked-off. A module-based training course for primary school teachers and educators (school tandems) starting on 23th January 2019 was announced. The training course is supported and certified by the regional further training unit of Berlin senate, registration is open: https://fortbildung-regional.de

v Final international partner meeting in Berlin

Between 13th and 15th November 2018 SPI Forschung hosted the fifth yMIND partner meeting. The project external evaluator presented the evaluation results. Based on them Seven Case Studies drafted by Colin Isham, featuring various facets of the two yMIND Good Practice models’ implementation in the four countries, along with successes and lessons learned were discussed by all partners.

The case studies can be downloaded as a stand-alone evidence document here.

Coming soon is the concerted version of all seven case studies compiled in the final outcome brochure of yMIND.  

Stay tuned!

yMIND's "Diversity in School" seminar hosted by Action Synergy was held on Saturday 6th of October at Impact Hub Athens with the attendance of 85 people mainly from the educational sector. yMIND is a participatory innovative project that promotes better social inclusion of newly-arrived migrant and Roma children and youth through comprehensive diversity education in school and community-based settings. The seminar included presentations from project partners and practicioners of the yMIND method.

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“Drop the label!”

yMIND’s  booklet with creative works and voices of children and young people on diversity, bullying, discrimination  and gender equality “Drop the label!” has now appeared!

Download here the German version “Raus aus der Schublade!”

Drop the label 

Soon to come are Bulgarian and Greek language versions and the common English version. 

Within the framework of the project, activities that took place in Greece include the organization of 3 different Capacity building training for Teachers in Athens and in Sparta (Peloponnese). A total of 25 teachers participated and thus were presented and trained on the activities and methodology promoted by yMind. It is worthwhile mentioning that one of the project’s main stakeholders in Greece is the “Counselling and Professional Orientation Centre (KESYP)” from the Ministry of Education in the district of Laconia (Peloponnese). KESYP is also member of the “District Action Group of Prevention in the Observatory of Violence”.

Moreover, during the course of the project a total of 304 students from 8 educational institutions covering all levels of initial education (Kindergarten, Elementary, High-School), in both public and private sector, have participated in the project’s activities as described in the Synopsis and Methodology Handbook developed for yMind. One of the workshops in Sparta,  was conducted by a person who 10 years ago was himself a victim of bullying and has acquired a disability because of this.

Finally some of the opinions expressed during the 2 focus groups that took place so far are described below:

- Often students feel pressured by parents and teachers to study harder (sometimes they are not in good terms with them).
-The school system is demanding and as a result they do not have much free time. 
-Students often feel stressed: for marks, from family issues and from other peers (social exclusion, for being teased or picked on, for not belonging in in the “cool” group ) etc.
- According to the majority of the girls two of the most prominent forms of bullying nowadays are cyberbullying and social exclusion. Mostly girls are affected by these.
-Students with learning disabilities (ie. dyslexia) feel that they are in a more difficult and different position one from the rest of the students.

The Austrian Women's Shelters Network together with 18 pupils and teachers from an Integration class in Vienna, has developed a screenplay for a video on bullying. The video is called "Bullying - More than just a fight". It is Larissa a new student, she comes from poorer backgrounds, does not know so well, she is somehow different, is shy and she is laughed at for being different. Especially two boys - Lukas and Dragan. Both are starting to get more violent. They also persuade Edi and Alex to joke about Larissa. Larissa withdraws more and more, does not speak to anyone anymore. The more shy she becomes, the harder the harassment of Lukas and Dragan becomes. On Friday afternoon after school Larissa grabs the school bag and wants to go home immediately, but Dragan puts her the "foot". Larissa falls and she falls to the ground. She gets nosebleeds. She begins to cry because her nose begins to hurt violently. A schoolfriends comes and asks what happened, comforts her and picks up the homeroom teacher. Dragan laughs! The teacher goes with Larissa to the school doctor, this supplies her nose, the nose bleeding stops, but the pain is getting worse and the nose swells. The doctor asks what exactly happened. Larissa tells the true story. The doctor calls the rescue, because she is convinced that nose is broken. The rescue brings Larissa to the hospital. The doctor at the hospital confirms the nasal fracture and says to the worried mother of Larissa: We have to file a complaint about assault.

After the scene played by the children, answers to the following questions follow:

Bullying is ...? Violence, discrimination, exclusion, hurtful, destructive etc.

What can we do? Help, support, leave the victim not allon,  get the teachers to help, talk to the victim, stop the perpetrators, etc.

The films ends with an apology from the offenders at Larissa.

The main message of the video is: violence is not a solution. We do not accept violence. There is help.

On May 18th was held the national dissemination conference to spread yMIND achievements in Sofia. HESED team was proud to host many NGO partners in the Center for Integrated Development in the Roma neighbourhood. The colleagues were really impressed by the project activities and the results at this stage and declared their hope for further possibilities for implementation of activities to prevent violence in schools in Bulgaria.

On Tuesday, 5th of June, the German Charta der Vielfalt organises the 6. German Diversity-Day! yMIND is part of the play with the upcoming whole-school event, summer fest on 8th June. More information can be found in the website https://www.charta-der-vielfalt.de/diversity-tag/aktionsfinder/liste/von_bis/st/seite/3/

The yMIND booklet presenting the strong and lively children’s and young people’s voices on diversity, gender equality and bullying in school, developed with the contributions of more than 360 students in 18 schools (and one kindergarten) in Austria, Bulgaria, Germany and Greece  is upcoming this summer!

SPI is just finalising the design of the common English language web version that will be soon posted here and printed in three partner languages in the course of the autumn 2018.

Here is a taster for you, three post cards were published in Germany as an appreciative giveaway for the invaluable work of our young co-authors and their teachers!

One of the HESED community centers hosted a meeting with representatives from the State Agency for Child Protection, the Agency for Social Assistance and Sofia Municipality’s Department of Social Work. The participants learned about various programs applied in the frames of the Model for Integrated Development and were impressed by the progress and reflectiveness of the young people, participating in our project yMIND, which focuses on anti-bullying in schools.

Beside the 3rd partner meeting in Vienna, in the last month yMIND has participated in several scientific forums of national scope and importance in Germany, which supported the dissemination and upscaling of the good practice models.

The third project meeting of the y-MIND project was held in Vienna, Austria from the 12^th until the 14^th of March. The main aim of the meeting was the review and discussion on the progress and implementation of the two best practices. During the meeting, the partners had the chance to present the current situation related with the implementation of the two best practices models in their country and discuss about the continuation, evaluation and upscaling of the project activities.

The meeting was organized by the Austrian partner of the project, Austrian Women's Shelter Network (AÖF) and hosted in the hospitable offices of AKIS (http://akiseu.com), the Afghan cultural centre in Vienna.  An onsite visit was organized to the offices of AÖF in order to give the opportunity to the partners to see and discuss the other activities of the organization. Finally, the partners have participated in a flash mob in front of the Austrian parliament organized by organisations working for gender equality requesting from the Austrian government 21 times more budget for prevention and gender equality work.

The GEAR project, which results formed one of the basis for the Good Practice 1 model of yMIND holds an event presenting its results and policy recommendations at the European Parliament   on 21^st of November. The event is organised by the European Anti-violence network and the Smile of the Child and is entitled "Gender Equality Awareness Raising against Intimate Partner Violence: Empowering new generations to build healthy intimate relationships". You can download also the agenda of the event.

yMIND was present at the EACEA Thematic Cluster meeting on Social Inclusion: Inspiring Trends in European Funded Projects that took place in Brussels on 9 October 2017. More than 100 projects   from the Erasmus +, Europe for Citizens and Creative Europe programmes attended the meeting. The project’s technical coordinator from SPI Forschung gGmbH participated in two of the workshops and hosted an Open Space discussion session on “Diversity from children’s perspective” group during Workshop 1: Intercultural dialogue and mutual understanding.