Project: Mala VIP
Description
The project wants young people to find innovative answers to local inequalities, implementing them and sharing these good practices with each other. At the same time, these young people should develop the necessary skills to fully exercise their citizenship and right to participate, developing activities and contributing in an entrepreneurial way to their well-being in situations of social vulnerability from a local perspective.
The sharing of good practices among the young agents of change, as well as the materials created, were essential for the impact of the project and for the creation of the final product – a pedagogical kit, which they called Mala Vivacidade, Innovation and Participation (“VIP Bag”) as a means of dissemination and continuity in combating inequalities and promoting the full exercise of citizenship.
Area of Intervention
Education and Social
Target Group
Children and young people between the ages of 8-18, both genders, and of diverse cultural backgrounds.
They came from socially and economically vulnerable contexts, with some problems identified, and presented multiple disadvantages in access to opportunities and the exercise of citizenship.
The direct beneficiaries were, in a first phase, adolescents and young people covered by the intervention of the member institutions of the Rede Construir Juntos in a perspective of empowerment. In a second phase, children were the direct beneficiaries of the action of the same young people, in view of the exercise of the right to participate.
Within the various groups of beneficiaries, we have encountered: children and young people in poverty and social exclusion; teenage mothers, children and young people with promotion and protection and/or institutionalised measures, young people with educational and/or penal protection measures, adolescents and young people who left school and were outside any educational/training measure, people with physical and mental disabilities, beneficiaries of social support.
General Objectives
- Tackle inequalities by promoting proactive attitudes to change and problem-solving.
- Facilitate the education of peers.
- Promote the exercise of the right to participation, in a conscious, informed and responsible manner.
Scope (National or International)
National
Identification of External Partnerships
The Rede Construir Juntos founded in 1997 is a nationwide network, whose purpose is to promote work and enhance the synergies of actions to combat social exclusion in the area of childhood and youth.
In this context 2010 saw the creation of the Rede Juvenil “Construir Juntos” (RJCJ) as a result of collaboration with youngsters who are involved in the Rede “Construir Juntos”.
Among its objectives we highlight: – To enhance the active participation of children and young people in the measures that concern them, giving them the word and establishing contacts between youngsters and policymakers so that they can air their suggestions and proposals; – To contribute to the adequacy of national and international policy measures for children and youth.
The partners in this project were the institutions that make up the Lisbon branch of the RCJ.
Each institution had as its mission to develop the project with the young people involved in it, to promote reflection and debate on the previously selected themes and to stimulate creativity for the construction of innovative pedagogical materials with an impact on the peer group.
The institutions involved in the project also had the mission of evaluating it, as well as the dissemination of good practices and the pedagogical kit as an innovative methodology in the fight against social inequalities and the promotion of citizenship and the exercise of the right to participation.
Communication between intervening services and overlapping areas
National and International Cooperation
Implementation Period
Main Results
- About 60 children and young people were involved throughout the project, although in the exchanges there was an average participation of 35 to 40 children.
- Throughout the development of the project was held the training for the exercise of citizenship, through the training of skills, to 60 children and young people.
- Sixty pedagogical suitcases were produced (containing 2 didactic games on Human Rights; Brochure, Pen with pedagogical content and poster alluding to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights designed by the young people of the project).
- Dissemination of materials produced to about 300 children and young people in various contexts (prolonged multiplier effect).
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