IT Piloting Report – P1 Borgorete P2 Comune di Perugia The place
The piloting took place in two different places in the city of Perugia -
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1. The market of Ponte Felcino and a close community venue room where the Group 1 Moroccan women underwent classroom lessons combined with the open air activities at the marketplace 2. The marketplace and car parking called “Il Bove”, where a big community of Ukraine women and men gathers every Saturday morning to exchange goods, information and to spend some time at the local marketplace and the cafè which is next to it.
Timing The piloting took place during the span of time of a whole year: from September 2013 to end October 2014 and specifically: - September 2014 to May 2014 for what concerns nr 1., Ponte Felcino market - April 2014 to October 2014 for what concerns nr. 2, Il Bove marketplace The total duration of the activities reached 40 hours in both cases. Target Group(s) Our activities were directed to women and men of migrant background who live in Italy for family and /or work reasons but who nevertheless failed to be included in formal and non formal training programmes and, therefore, possess a low level of competence in the Italian language and- overallof the linguistic structures that allow them to perform necessary communicative functions such as communicating with the health workers, with teachers, with public officers etc. The piloting targeted three different community groups: Moroccan women (with two from Tunisia), between around 23 and 60 years old, all married with sons, following their husbands who moved to Italy for work (Group 1) ; a group of Ukrainian caregivers around 40-65 years old who have been in Italy for a few years and who live alone (Group 2); a “come and go” group composed by single individuals from Nigeria and Romania, specifically a Nigerian man who attended for 3 or 4 times (Group 3). 1
The common characteristics of all of these group was the fact of being completely out of the reach of the formal and non formal training offers in the city. In the case of the Ucraine women (group 2) this was mainly due to total lack of time left by their caregiving job, which does leave them just a day free in the week and no free time in the evenings, when most of these programmes happen to be. In the case of the Moroccan women (group 1) the exclusion from the formal learning opportunities was primarily due to cultural reasons and to reasons related to what can be called trust- It seems, in fact, that they dropped out from previous language learning programmes for they didn’t feel at ease. In the case of the Nigerian man (Group 3), the reasons are mainly due to a extremely difficult social situation, characterized by poverty and clandestinity, which also prevented him to be enough motivated also towards the tailored-to-him Bazaar’s meetings Learners’ needs A crucial part of the piloting was the identification of the learners’ needs, in order to provide them with highly relevant learning pathways and learning materials, which we decided to call “tailored materials”, as a specific feature of the Bazaar’s approach. The three target groups showed the important and common need of improving their language skills in Italian (also by reinforcing the educational skills, especially for the group 1 and 3) but with some differences: the Moroccan women live rather isolated from the social context and have a few opportunities to interact with the Italians, so they wanted to generally talk more in Italian and specifically to became able to speak and share information with their sons’ teachers and with the doctor(s). Moreover, they also felt the need of interacting and sharing their culture with the coaches and trainers (in number of 5 in total) for instance describing the Moroccan places or the Moroccan cooking recipes. The Ukrainian caregivers possess a high educational background but also many difficulties in learning Italian and needed to improve it for work purposes: even if the caregivers live and work in Italy, they do not have many opportunities of speaking Italian since they take care of people with heavy diseases, who do not interact with them. They wanted to enhance their Italian to find quickly a new job in the case they would lose it (and some actually lost it). We focused on their needs through an interview/ needs questionnaire at the beginning of the course and by continuously talking with them during the piloting. Finally, regarding the Group 3, we report the case of F. , a 38 years old man from Nigeria, struggling with everyday difficulties due to his condition of being clandestine and – consequentlyunemployed. His worries related to expressing simple communication matters concerning his health. Being clandestine he has right to be visited only by the Hospital’s doctors or by a medical centre managed by volunteers, both located in specific parts of the city. More often he would step into a pharmacy and try to express his physical feeling, most of the time without success and overall without empaty by the part of the pharmacy staff (concerned with business more than health). For him, to learn body part names was a great achievement. Activities done and tools used We pinpointed these specific target groups in their community’s venues and we physically went to them in order to engage them in the project’s activities; with the group 1 we moved indoor during winter using a room in the public garden of the town where the women live. Following the core of the Bazaar’s approach, especially with the group 1 we enforced activities of “real life”, using the authentic text and environment of the market: the Moroccan women interacted with the sellers to buy different kinds of goods, or asking for some particular recipes with the vegetables that the seller had in its stall, transcribing them and then sharing with the seller their own recipes and suggestions1. We furthermore used ad hoc created learning materials that responded to the 1
http://www.bazaarproject.eu/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Limoni-sotto-sale.docx
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detected needs. With the Ucrainian women the approach was slightly different in the sense that they were A case in point was the approach used with the single learner from Nigeria (Group 3). The level of scholarization was very low and required ad hoc created visual learning materials such as comic strips (www.pixton.com – bazaarproject) or very simplified visually-based learning materials and excercises.
Activities and content relevance Referring to the learners’ needs, we proposed activities linked to the “discourse worlds” that they identified as necessary in their real life communication processes: the health, the school, the culture and food. We therefore adopted a thematic and life-relevant approach. The kind of activities ranged from content based activities to task-based activities like interacting within the marketplace clients and sellers. The relevance of the Bazaar Approach The Bazaar’s approach utterly revealed to be very efficacy and efficient in order to: -
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Engage hard to reach adult migrants in informal and non formal learning activities, for they would be normally being excluded by Motivate learners towards the involvement in the learning processes also acting a a”bridge” between informal and formal learning (ie. Most learners- after the Bazaar piloting- declared they would be more inclined to participate to training initiatives in general) Build capacities of coaches and volunteers enhancing their key and transversal skills Modelize a new approach to provide teaching and learning activities to hard to reach group 3
Difficulties and outcomes Within the Ponte Felcino market location, there were no difficulties in the training process that concerned the Moroccan women group 1. They demonstrated, since the beginning to appreciate our effort to come to meet their interests and needs and this was proved by the fact that no drop out occurred within the learning course. The difficulties linked to the second location, that is the Il Bove marketplace and the group 2 were actually related to the fact of using the public space location (the benches ) in front of the local cafè, for the teaching and learning activities. This space, in fact, is not totally public but in fact belongs to the bar. In spite of the sensitization activities done by the coachers, the bar owners generally disliked the fact that the learning took place in their premises, in spite of the fact that both the coaches and the trainees were consumers. Outputs and results The learners: Increased communication and language skills Increased motivation and positive attitude towards participation to learning activities Building and reinforcing community links The coaches/volunteers: Increased capacities of addressing the needs of migrant adults belonging to different socio-cultural contexts Increased capacity Increased key and transversal skills
Key Statements from volunteer coach: Did you find the Bazaar project useful in developing your skills and competences?
Yes indeed this project improved my skills and competences, I really would like to continue Will you continue working as a Peer Mentor/coach with the group or similar in the community?
ABSOLUTELY !!!
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Lessons Learnt
Community-based learning as a success factor Flexibility of timing, learning materials and syllabus is recommended Building of trust and confident relationship with the coaches as the basis for motivation to undergo the teaching and learning programme. Meeting cultural specificities of the learners as a success factor (ie. The Moroccan women wanted to be within their community- sharing experiences through common values- no men allowed)
Further reading For the stories and the learning materials about this piloting please visit the Blog of the project: http://www.bazaarproject.eu/blog/ and particularly: For all the other products please visit the Resources page of the Bazaar website: http://www.bazaarproject.eu/en/resources For a quick interaction, for news and for any comments and feedback please visit our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/BazaarLearnAndExchangeAtTheMarketplace?fref=ts
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