SCS

SOCIAL CAPITAL SCHOOL (SCS)

Short Description

Within the framework of the European Year of Volunteering the Social Capital School (SCS) http://socialcapital.europe2010-2020.eu spins from the idea of a school open to the contribution of all active players of the educational field (teachers, parents, grandparents, social workers, volunteers etc...), in this way supporting a new concept of non formal and informal training on non profit cooperation, volunteering, social inclusion, active citizenship, human and social growth. The school thus exploits its immense “social capital” to actively affect civic, social and cultural education. This project was born from the concrete need of parents to start a dialogue and a confrontation with the school world (especially with teachers), on how to grow together young active citizens taking care of different roles, contexts and educational approaches. In its 2-year lifetime, the project will have a strong awareness-raising and empowerment focus for the adults, senior citizens and young people involved; these will reflect on and engage in planning and experiencing specific daily practices, as mentors and facilitators of a “community development for inclusion”, primarily drawing on experiences from the school’s varied environment. The great added value of this project is the variety of the partnership composed by different kind of organizations which will be actively involved and will practice different forms of education, through pedagogical and cultural-artistical approaches on the main subjects - non profit cooperation, volunteering, social inclusion, active citizenship, human and social growth, intergenerational dialogue, formal/informal/non formal - to promote the culture of the social capital school including civil society, from local to global.

Objectives

1.Compare different experiences between associations, teachers, parents, grandparents, social workers, volunteers in the field of non-formal education on non profit cooperation, volunteering, social inclusion, active citizenship, human and social growth, intergenerational dialogue, creating a concrete space of confrontation and training for participants and co-organizers; 2.Raise awareness of teachers and institutions on the role of other possible active players of the educational field (parents, grandparents, social workers, volunteers, associations etc...) and on the positive results of the unity of purpose in the education field; involve them directly as active players in the learning and active citizenship process; 3.Experiment a new concept of extended family, where parents do not take care only of their own children, but they offer their time and competences to help other parents and adults in general, opening the school to the outside world and concretely contributing to increasing chances for everyone children; and different pedagogical approaches (informal, formal and non formal); 4.Promote creativity and arts as an approach to getting knowledge and inclusion, and create different outputs to represent the subject of the project: videos, theater performances, artworks, romance or poems, documents, dance or other sports' events, communication tools...; 5.Promote the “culture of social capital” as an opportunity to develop active citizenship, to promote volunteering and sense of ownership of the EU, whilst enhancing tolerance, inclusion, solidarity and mutual understanding, confidence on collectivity and on human relationships and raise awareness on the importance of entrepreneurship and innovation in using gained knowledge in practice.

From the concrete need of parents to start a dialogue and a confrontation with the school world, we will face also the following problems: failure in education and thus prevention of school drop-out, bullism, xenophobia and violence rate in the school; students’, parents and teachers motivation.