Centre for European Volunteering, in collaboration with 6 other partner organisations and universities based in Belgium, Croatia, Ireland, Spain, Austria and Slovakia have recently launched “SLUSIK: Service Learning Upscaling Social Inclusion for Kids”, a project co-funded by the EU’s Erasmus+ Social Inclusion programme.
The main objective of the project is enhancing the acquisition of social and civic competences, fostering knowledge, understanding and ownership of values and fundamental rights. For this project, the consortia will use the Service Learning model[1] already in place in the universities that are partners in the project, “scale it up” and “test” in cooperation with high schools in 5 countries and advocate for service learning to be part of the secondary school curriculum.
Over the planned 24 months, a full circle of activities is envisioned, encompassing project coordination and quality control, stages of research and upscaling of the model, piloting SLUSIK curricula in schools, as well visibility and advocacy activities. The project will run on the basis of existing models and will require extensive involvement of a wide group of stakeholders, such as teachers, educational practitioners, schools, HEIs, decisionmakers and NGOs working in the field of education and others.
Gabriella Civico, Director of CEV mentioned: “Service learning curricula is a proven tool to enhance the civic competences and engagement of students in initiatives in their communities, contributing to the prevention of social exclusion. I am sure the project will produce an adaptable model and materials to be used across Europe both by policy makers and schools in different school contexts and situations”.
Marko Paunović, CEO of Out of the Box International emphasizes that “Civil Sector organisations and Educational institutions should cooperate more in order to create innovative and “up-to-date” educational practices able to enter state educational systems. “SLUSIK”project is a great example of cross-sectoral cooperation and we are very glad to be part of this initiative from its start”.
The SLUSIK Project, co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union, is led by the Centre for European Volunteering (Belgium) in collaboration with Out of the Box International (Belgium), Rijeka University (Croatia) , University of Limerick (Ireland), University of Granada (Spain), University College of Teacher Education, Vienna (Austria), Matej Bel University (Slovakia).
[1] Service learning is An educational approach that combines learning objectives with community service in order to provide a pragmatic, progressive learning experience while meeting societal needs
