SAFE: School Approaches for Family Empowerment

A European project headed by the municipality of the City of Reggio Emilia, with the involvement of the Intercultural Centre Mondinsieme, which encourages social integration of foreign families through initiatives that involve local schools with diverse students.

The project, called SAFE, is carried out in partnership with the Italian municipalities of Arezzo and Torino, the City of Lewisham (UK), and the Efus (European Forum on Social Security). It is co-financed by the European Fund for the Integration of non-EU immigrants and the Italian Government. The project meetings will take place in all the Italian partner cities and in Lewisham (one of the most populated suburbs of London), with study visits to schools and organisations working on the relations between young people and their families. SAFE is based on the method of networking: Reggio Emilia, Torino and Arezzo are part of the Italian Network of Intercultural cities; Reggio Emilia and Lewisham are members of the Intercultural cities program of the Council of Europe. It also aims to reach and involve public servants, intercultural mediators, school heads and families. It has been developed to give the school a central role in the process of social integration of foreign families and to value the competences and social Moreover, the project aims to find the suitable means for families' social inclusion and to stimulate dialogue and networking between the towns involved.

Among the expected results, it aims to: increase knowledge and analysis of good politics and practices about foreign families’ support inside the school and through educational processes, both at national and European level; foster exchanges, debates and a structured benchmarking king actions between the more advanced European experiences; promote and broaden a structured portability of good practices in order to implement new politics supporting foreign families through school. In order to facilitate the exchange of different experiences, partners will organize meetings, workshops and networking tools. SAFE points to the engagement of local authorities, teachers, and cultural mediators in all its steps towards the development of policies that support foreign families. The good practices experienced during the project will be collected and organised in a specific on-line tool and they will be the guidelines for the development of policies supporting families through school.