From the 12th to the 19th of August, Daniele Grassetti and Erica Cacioppollini left for Deutschlandsberg in Austria for a training course about inclusion.
This training was part of a bigger project called “ALL IN”, which includes 8 partner associations that work together to create training modules in order to help youth workers to make their work inclusive to all.
The objectives of this week in Austria were :
- To provide participants theoretical and practical tools to adopt an inclusive approach
- To encourage exchange of experience between participants
- To reinforce collaboration at an European level
- To test the training modules about inclusion that were created at an international level
We asked them a few questions about them and their experience :
Can you introduce yourself and tell us what you do ?
Daniele: I am Daniele Grassetti, I am a football coach, and the President of an organization in Pesaro which is called Lapallarotonda, it’s a sport and cultural association.
Erica: I am Erica, I also work for Lapallarotonda association, and I love to travel !
What was your motivation to go to this training ?
E: Our association works with social inclusion, so this training was a good opportunity to learn more about the topic.
How is this relevant with your work ?
D: It is relevant because we are trying to include more people in our activities, which is not simple. so we were looking for some tools and some good practices to make it possible. And actually, we learnt things in the training that could help us with a project we want to organize in the next months, including refugees and people with disability if possible.
What difficulties do you face here in Pesaro, to work in an inclusive way ?
D: The main challenge is to find partners, because we need to develop partnerships with bigger organizations. There are some organizations which are managing a lot of projects in the city and slowly we are trying to make our work appreciated and noticed by them. So, this is our main challenge right now, as well as finding funds.
What did you learn that you didn’t know before ?
D: For sure in the field of disabilities we learn some practical information that we have to consider before organizing events with people. But also some possibilities, I thought that it was very difficult to create activities like excursions for example with people with disability, but in practice it can be done. There are some organizations in Pesaro, which are going in this direction and maybe we can also go in this direction. With refugees, we learnt that still we are thinking too local, when we think about activities, we are trying to include people of our city, but we could expand to a more global view.
E: In general I think that going deeper into the topic has been good to be more aware of what we can do better in terms of inclusion, because it’s easy to not be inclusive in the job we are doing. So it was a good way to reflect on the way we are doing things right now and how to go ahead.
Did this training meet your expectations ?
E: Yes it was very interesting, and it was very good to meet many people working in the same field as us, or even in different fields connected to inclusion. Sharing experience with people is super important for us, to learn. So it did meet my expectations, definitely!
D: My expectations were high, because I’ve been collaborating with Vicolocorto for several years now and I had already took part in one project with Youth in Progress Austria and I know that they are really professional in this field, they know a lot of things. But my expectations were totally fulfilled because not only I got a lot of knowledge from the trainers, but also a lot of knowledge from the participants.
With the information you got in the training, and the people you met there, how do you think the topic of inclusion varies from one country to another ?
D: The coordinator was Austrian and in the organization team there were people from all the participant’s countries (Austria, Spain, Bulgaria, Slovenia and also France and Finland). In Deutschlandsberg and Austria in general, I think they are paying a lot of attention, maybe care more about disabilities measure.
From my perception, in Pesaro, it’s a bit complicated to enlarge the view of people, in terms of every social barrier that we mentioned, in terms of every kind of discrimination we were speaking about. I feel like it was more open-minded environment there, but maybe I’m wrong.
E: It is not easy anywhere I guess, it just depends on how strong you fight for your rights.
If you want to find out more about the project, take a look at the website!
Gautier, Léa, Jonathan & Nayra
Vicolocortini 