Activities for children, who are not enrolled in preschool, and their parents

An international training course on Activities for children, who are not enrolled in preschool, and their parents was carried out within the Erasmus+ project Khetaun (Together): With Key Steps to Inclusion of Romani Children into Quality Early Childhood Programs from 9th to 13th May 2016 in Ljubljana (Slovenia).

The training course was focused on following topics:

• Rationale for implementation of the Activities  for children, who are not enrolled in preschool, and their parents;
• Participation rates of Romani children in the education system and reasons for low participation rates;
• Ensuring greater participation rates of Romani children in quality ECEC programs;
• Peer to peer learning on implementation of the Activities for children, who are not enrolled in preschool, and their parents, focusing on target groups, information campaign, aims and goals, forms and contents, benefits for children, parents and professionals, and challenges;
• Presentation of linguistically, culturally and developmentally appropriate multilingual material for children (picture books) and identification of possible uses of the picture books in implementation of the Activities for children, who are not enrolled in preschool, and their parents;
• Joint development of guidelines for implementation of the Activities for children, who are not enrolled in preschool, and their parents, based on discussions and presentations of all participants.

During the training course we had also meetings with representatives of Government of the Republic of Slovenia – Office for National Minorities, Preschool Kekec Grosuplje, Center for School and Outdoor Education and Preschool Šentvid (local project partner).

At the end of the training course each partner organization designed an action plan that will ensure the transfer of the newly acquired content and information directly into their practice and context. In the project partnership we are convinced that only meetings at the international level and training by providing information and expert discussions are not sufficient to transfer in-depth testing and adaptation of the new information and skills. Mere training, which is created on the basis of carefully collected and documented needs and followed carefully designed action plan can provide the opportunities and create conditions for achieving results.