ADD@ME – Views International

ADD@ME: Transnational Meeting & International Multiplier Event in Florence, Italy.

OfficeViews — Sun, 13 Nov 2022 16:06:15 +0000

Welcome back to the news regarding the Add@Me KA2 project. On 13th of October, project’s partners gathered in Florence for the final Transnational Meeting. During this meeting the details and tasks regarding the three Intellectual Outputs were concluded. Issues related to dissemination activities were also discussed. Among these activities, emphasis was put on the creation of the fourth newsletter and it was agreed that two articles would be published in a local newspaper.

Details and deadlines for dissemination reports for each partner were also agreed. For the follow-up part of the project, each of the partners suggested an idea that could be linked to the project Intellectual Outputs.

Two days later, on 15th of October the project’s International Multiplier Event took place in the relaxing and beautiful Oblate library. The conference consisted in sharing the project’s three Intellectual Outputs. Approximately 40 local people attended the event. The audience was completed by representatives of the partner’s countries and several representatives of local and international institutions. The meeting started with the guests sharing their thoughts regarding the importance of awareness of VIP struggles in society and how this is connected to make the world a better place, especially in these times with all the events that are happening. The project’s three Intellectual Outputs were presented in detail and the explanation of how they can be used were shared with the participants. The conference ended with an appetizer on the rooftop of the library. In this informal setting, we were invited to try Italian food and talk about the results of this project and about the future projects that VIEWS International can be involved in.

Overall, the event was a success and we look forward to implementing our local Multiplier Event in Liège.

Learning Training Teaching Activity – Blended mobility of young people – ADD@Me Project

OfficeViews — Tue, 07 Jun 2022 05:43:27 +0000

VIEWS International welcomed participants for a learning teaching training activity in Liège. Participants from countries as far as Greece, Italy, Romania, Spain, Poland as well as Belgium gathered to take part in an intensive training camp for our project ADD@ME (Ambassadors of Diversity and non-Discrimination @ new Methods in non-formal Education) which aims to teach youth workers how to organize awareness raising workshops and equip them with the necessary tools towards this end. Our guests arrived on May 16 and stayed until May 22, during which they learned about facilitating awareness raising workshops with both theoretical and practical exercises.

The first day of the training kicked off with the participants getting to know each other and receiving an introductory session into facilitation with good practice examples. The partner countries presented the ADD@ME project including the tools they developed along with the idea that visually impaired participants would organize their own awareness raising workshops when they returned to their home countries. Of course, future facilitators had also a session where they were informed about how to plan and implement awareness raising workshops.

The second day of the training was allocated to familiarising participants with the project tools and testing those tools for usability. Trainees got the chance to test first the Mobile Toolkit which has more than 100 non-formal training methods (awareness raising and energiser activities) to choose from while organizing a workshop. It is one of the two comprehensive tools designed specifically for raising awareness about visual impairment as part of the project. The next tool that the participants got their hands on was the ADD@ME Online Trivial Game, a platform with a set of quizzes on different topics of visual impairment that aims to increase the knowledge of quiz takers and make them more aware about how people with visual impairment live their lives with a gamifying approach.

Then came the third day of the training with cultural, social and outdoor activities. The day got to a start with a guided tour of Liège which took everyone to a journey in the past and introduced the main attractions of the city to the guests with a bit of history. After a nice picnic for lunch, the group went on to visit la Lumière, the local association of the blind and learned about the services that la Lumière offers to the visually impaired people living in the area.

In the last two days of the training, the facilitators left the stage to the participants and they planned their own awareness raising workshops in small groups, working on the main elements of an awareness raising workshop such as their aims, target groups e.g., students or adults, how many people to involve, how to promote their workshops, find a place and set the timetable according to their aims. Then they used the project tools to find the activities and methods they needed for their workshops and prepared simulations of activities, which they presented to the whole group and got feedback to improve themselves.

The event came to a close with evaluation and feedback sessions to improve the project tools and the participants left Liège, well equipped with the necessary tools and knowledge to organize their own awareness raising workshops in their local communities.

Add@Me project – Local Multiplier Events in Belgium

Giulia D'Agnolo — Thu, 02 Jun 2022 13:53:00 +0000

The Add@Me project aims at empowering young people with a visual impairment (youngsters with vi) to become key players in processes concerning their own social inclusion at EU level.

As the last step of implementing the Add@Me project, we carried out three local multiplier events. We started our activities in La Baraka AISBL where Lèa, Jay and Mihai carried out energisers, awareness raising activities and different games that they used based on the second Intellectual Output – Add@Me Mobile Toolkit. This web app contains a large number of non-formal learning methods/activities, designed with respect to accessibility and usability features in order to be used by people with visual impairments. The main objective of this output is to implement awareness raising workshops on visual impairment in favor of their local community (e.g. sighted friends, mates, colleagues, etc.). The Add@Me Toolkit is available from the project website as well as from partners’ organizations websites and it is translated into English, Spanish, French, Greek, Italian, Polish and Romanian.

The multiplier events ended with the presentation and the playing of the Intellectual Output number three of the Add@Me project – Online Trivial Game for Visually Impaired Ambassadors. This third Intellectual Output is an educational tool created to support visually impaired youngsters / facilitators, in animating and facilitating in an engaging and funny way the awareness raising workshops on visual impairment! It includes a Multilingual User Guide and it consists of quizzes relevant to the history of visually impaired famous persons as well as artists and musicians with a visual disability, assistive technologies, the braille alphabet, disability-related knowledge and sports for visually impaired people ().

The activities continued in Jean Boets highschool and IRHOV school for persons with disabilities, where the activities of awareness raising, non-formal games and the trivial game continued. Overall, the dissemination was a success and was presented to over 50 people. The young people that participated in an active way learned about visual impairment while having fun. That said, we invite you, our readers, to take part in the trivial game and find out how much you know about disability by clicking on the two links above in this article.

ADD@ME Join-Staff Training Event, Warsaw (Poland)

OfficeViews — Thu, 30 Sep 2021 08:02:37 +0000

One of the main activities of the ADD@ME project is the joint staff training event which was held in Warsaw between August 31^st and September 5^th.

In a nutshell, the ADD@ME project aims at empowering young people with a Visual impairment (youngsters with Vi) to become KEY PLAYERS IN PROCESSES concerning THEIR OWN SOCIAL INCLUSION at EU level.

The short-term joint staff training allowed youth workers (from Belgium, Italy, Spain, Greece, Romania and Poland) to:

• Familiarize and test at international level the Intellectual Output 1-Blended Training Programme (a training handbook with innovative and adapted non-formal learning methods and e-modules with the aim to empower and boost Vi youngsters’ self-confidence to become active citizens and participate actively in the society) for Visually Impaired Youngsters;

• Collect feedbacks from participants to replicate the training in the future so to transfer these skills to more Vi youngsters even after the project end, as well as to be able to train new youth workers on the use of the Blended Training Programme (multiplier effect);

Increase skills and knowledge of the involved youth workers through the new and adapted methodologies they will learn and share during the training, that they can apply in their daily work with the youngsters with Vi;
Give youth workers dealing with visual impairment a chance to meet, share experiences and best practices at EU level and create a permanent EU network of youth workers dealing with visual impairment;
Give youth workers a chance to experience a context which promotes solidarity and Non-Discrimination, in a multicultural and non-formal setting.

Except very full days of learning with our colleagues, we did try some Polish food like the yummy Pierogi and visit the old city center of Warsaw.

If you are interested by this project, do not hesitate to join us in one of the following events. We are looking for participants for the next events in Belgium, so come back to us if you wish to take part and/or want to help in any way.

Second Transnational Meeting of Ammbassadors of Diversity and Non-Discrimination Project

OfficeViews — Thu, 23 Sep 2021 08:16:07 +0000

Right before the summer holidays our team traveled to Greece. The second transnational meeting of the ADD@ME project ; Ambassadors of Diversity and non-Discrimination took place in Thessaloniki on the 10th of July 2021.

The meeting venue was provided by Syzoi. The coordinator The Italian Blind Union (UICI) [Italy] together with the partnering organisations, VIEWS International [Belgium], FDO [Spain], University of Thessaly [Greece], Polish Union for the Blind [Poland] and OFENSIVA TINERILOR ASOCIATA [Romania] had the time to gather and talk about the progress of the project.

The three [3] main intellectual outputs were thoroughly discussed, new ideas were found and constructive conversations were held. New tasks and responsibilities were also shared amongst the partners. Additionally, the team had the time to arrange the next steps and plan for the future. Part of these plans is the upcoming training event which will take place in Poland from the 31st of August to the 4th of September 2021.

Overall the meeting ran smoothly as expected and it concluded in a very positive tone.