Education in Intercultural Mediation related to Public Administration Services
The EMPASSE project aims at fostering intercultural dialogue by promoting the exchange of best practice among different countries on existing education/training pathways in intercultural mediation services within public administration.
In a context of increasing migration towards Europe, successive enlargements of the Union and the increased mobility inside EU the need of a specific professional figure working with migrants and their interactions with local public authorities (municipalities, hospitals, prisons, schools, etc) is more and more requested. One of the way to get this goal is the linguistic and cultural mediation that facilitate communication when misunderstandings or conflicts due to cultural and linguistic differences pose actual or potential barriers between people of different backgrounds and service providers.
Activities:
- Analysis, in a European context, of aspects and the issue related to intercultural mediation in local public authorities;
- Local community awareness on the project aim and their involvement;
- Involvement of local stakeholders in identifying, in each country, organisations whose task will be to collect best practices in linguistic and cultural mediation;
- Collection, in partners countries, of best practice related to: Adult education, competences survey, management of cultural and linguistic mediation services, interpreting and translation to support the neo-communitarian and extra-communitarian citizens;
- Creation of a European table aimed at best practice sharing at local/national level in each partner country;
- Best practice dissemination and promotion system, through the realization of a web site (blog) and the distribution of web final products.
- The activities will be tightly linked to other local initiatives (conferences, seminars, workshops) carried out by the involved stakeholders to foster dissemination of the results and learners will be actively involved by making them aware about the project topic during all the project duration and proposing them a questionnaire on the issue to find out common problems and to collect best practice carried out in each partner country.
Added value
The impact on the learners and involved staff will be:
- Best practice exchange with colleagues of other countries working on intercultural issues;
- Active involvement of mediators and experiences exchange on intercultural mediation problems at local and European level;
- Analysis and identification of common topics with colleagues coming from other countries to identify improvements and new approaches for stimulating and promoting adult learners;
- Identification of improvements and innovative solutions for the education of mediators and more in general for the realisation of better mediation services within the Public Administration.
- To create a transnational team with specific competences on the thematic object of the project;
- To benefit from the experience of organizations from other countries;
- To exchange best practice and to link project activities with other ongoing activities;
- To discuss and to analyse common problems with colleagues from other countries;
- To improve the organizational structure, if necessary, using the best experiences of the partners.
- Dissemination of results reached by the project with the active involvement of local socio-economic actors who carry out an active role in the improvement of the mediation services within Public Administration;
- A general raising of the knowledge on mediation services issue at European level.
Dissemination of Results
During the project the dissemination activities of the project aims will be continuous in every country, involving other institutions in the local community interested in the issue and more in general the wider lifelong learning community.
Amongst the participating organization and institutions the results and best practice on intercultural issues will be collected and presented in a blog web site that will be integrated and implemented during all the project lifespan. At the end of the second year a final conference will be organized during which the reached results will be illustrated.
In itinere each partner will involve local stakeholders (Associations, NGOs, private and public organizations involved in lifelong learning, Public Authorities) in order to disseminate results at local level in synergy with other planned initiatives.
The final products produced during the project will be a project final report on strategies for mediation services within Public Administration with materials, activities and collected testimonies of mediators or mediation organisations that will be distributed through the local network and during seminars.
Moreover a further dissemination instrument will be the creation of a blog web site promoting best practice exchange on the project and addressed to mediators and all organizations involved in mediation services for disseminating best practice. In this way the achieved results and the reports will be shared and reach new organizations and more in general the lifelong learning community.