News article
Four additional ISSA Member organizations receive Primokiz training
News article
The TOY for Inclusion consortium has released the project’s Monitoring and Evaluation report. This report evaluates the impact of TOY for Inclusion’s Play Hubs from February to December 2021 and highlights the successes of this innovative approach and challenges that arose during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read the article here.
News article
The Childcare Unit of the city of Ghent, also ISSA member, is training parents as childcare workers. Parents involved in parent participation actions in the Ghent Childcare Settings are addressed and offered a training to gain vocational skills, whilst simultaneously having their children looked after. Parents who engage in the training program get additional mentorship and financial support since not only their enrolment fee is cancelled, but also training related costs become free of charge.
Resource
How to Business Model Canvas (BMC) provides guidance on how to deal with both external and internal organisational needs and the ways to best respond to them as an organisation. BMC is designed to increase accessibility and flexiblity to provide childcare inclusively for all by keeping high-quality standards.
The toolbox consists of a folder, four concrete examples of business models and a template of a business model canvas that you can complete yourself.
Resource
This report outlines how the access to childcare and employment can be enhanced for families living in vulnerable conditions by investing in strong systems, organisations and staff. It highlights what measures can be taken to support families into childcare and employment and to enhance their overall quality of life.
Resource
Providing accessible childcare can improve chances of vulnerable parents in general and on the labour market. With PACE we want to explore organising occasional and/or flexible childcare. As we are working with vulnerable parents, we have to be aware of their difficult living reality, where they face multi problems which will stand in the way of work and have to be tackled.
Issa Practices
The purpose of the Together Old and Young (TOY) Programme is to promote intergenerational learning and to create new possibilities for older adults and young children to learn together and benefit from each others’ company. People are living longer but older adults and young children are having less and less contact with each other. Parents and grandchildren are migrating to cities and countries far away from grandparents. For many grandparents, it is also sometimes difficult to keep in touch with grandchildren.
Issa Practices
The Learning Centers Network initiated by Balkan Sunflowers connects 40 Learning Centers managed by different NGOs in Albania. These centers include preschool services, curriculum support, literacy and science programs, and an education mediator targeting the most vulnerable children and their families. The mediator works with schools and families to ensure children's school enrolment. Due to these efforts, 93% of the eligible children from the areas where centers are and mediators work enroll in the first grade fo school.
Issa Practices
Inclusive Resource Centers (IRC) in five sites in four regions were developed under the programme supported by USAID. Their main purpose is to provide complex inter-sectorial support to children with special needs, their parents and teachers working with these children in pre-school and primary classrooms trough psychological-medical-pedagogical consultations.
The main achievements included:
1) increased number of services for parents of children with special needs;
2) increased level of trust;
3) more competent teachers.
Issa Practices
The COVID-19 pandemic and its mitigation measures have created an extra burden for grass-roots organizations and the communities they serve. Although ensuring sustainability of their programmatic work and finding innovative ways to meet the diverse needs of the families and children, especially of those living in vulnerable and adverse contexts, have always been at the core of their everyday work, the shock caused by COVID-19 is unprecedented in terms of speed, scope, and intensity.
