PARTNERS

The project comprises a complementary team with members of 3 countries and 4 institutions, (from various areas of knowledge and activities such as HEI, NGO, R&D and Business).

The IPSantarem (Promoter Country) as a Higher Education Institution with a focus on work in formal and non-formal teaching and learning, as well as, having the experience of training educators on engagement experiences with students with special needs or other disadvantaged participants and their inclusion on Higher Education contexts (it also has the first and only Portuguese Higher Education course especially designed for these students).

CSI (Cyprus) is a Research Center with a large experience on scientific assessment on several areas (educator training; social and labour inclusion; digital literacy; entrepreneurship; employability for citizens with disabilities) that are complimentary to this project. This institution had already worked with the Promoter (IPSantarem) in other occasions including KA2 projects.

Meath Partnership is an NGO responsible for the design and implementation of local, rural and community development programmes, focusing on building the capacity of communities through the delivery of a range of services and initiatives tackling persistent incidence of exclusion and disadvantage, playing a strategic role in the economic development. This institution also has previous collaboration in KA2 project with both CSI and IPSantarém.

Viatecla is a software house that has been working in educational projects and e-learning, both through their academic knowledge as well as through the development of applications. They have been collaborating in previous projects, as well as the Erasmus+ KA2 that identified the needs we are trying to answer with this project addressed to mentors. They have been collaborating with various national and international universities and entities. Knowing the specificity of our target group (mentors) and the ultimate beneficiaries (disability citizens), Viatecla will be a valuable partner.

In terms of what each partner brings to the project we can summarise it:

– Instituto Politécnico de Santarém (UIIPS) as a large expertise in similar projects and for that reason will coordinate the works. The expertise of UIIPS crosses all areas of the project such as formal and non-formal education and training, special needs education (with the first Portuguese Higher School course addressing this population), entrepreneurism (with an incubator called Starting Up inside the campus) and with expertise in development of educational content and technologies.

– CSI will have a very important role in this project which is the scientific assessment of the achieved results as well as the development of data collection tools and analysis in order to provide case studies, scientific publications and other resources on the awareness of this issue to other interested stakeholders.

– Meath Partnership is very experienced in working with disadvantaged background population and have large expertise in international projects. By having worked with the coordinator in other project the communication and collaboration is enhanced and facilitated. Their expertise on non-formal training activities are a great help for all partners.

– Viatecla is a fundamental partner since they are very experienced in the areas of training and in the development of gamification and technological instruments to be used in the project. By knowing the target group and the IDDs learners, as well as by being connected to a large group of enterprises they can also give support both to mentors and students.

We think that the complementarity and cooperation are expected at a high level in this project and, by having multiple agents with experience in different fields of higher education actions and with different targets we can bring added value to the project.