SALTO Inclusion 2003

SALTO TC Enable 2003

Even though the SALTO work is increasingly diversifying, the SALTO training courses remain one of its central 'success stories'. The topics for the Inclusion courses stem from consultations with National Agencies, the European Commission and Inclusion Workers. It is one of SALTO's aims to have provided training with a wide variety of focuses  by 2006 (YOUTH programme actions, target groups or methodologies).

The SALTO Inclusion course topic in 2003 was quite obviously focussing on the inclusion of young people with a disability because of the European Year of People with a Disability. However we did not want to focus on projects 'exclusively' for young people with a disability, but rather 'how to use the YOUTH programme for mixed-ability projects'.

• Amongst the 49 participants 9 youth workers had a disability themselves (visual, auditive, mobility, severe allergies) and two came with a personal assistant, which made the course a real life example of a mixed ability project.
• The course took place in Lucenec (Slovakia) in succesful cooperation with the Slovak NA. The SALTO Inclusion Resource Centre finds it important to involve various NAs in its work, both from Pre-Accession as well as EU/EFTA countries.

For the first time the documentation of the course was done directly online in the Toolbox for Training, where participants and other interested people could find all methods, background documents and outcomes of the TC Enable shortly after the course. The toolbox aims to gather training tools in a cumulative way.

• More information about the course here.

Expanding Inclusion

Seen the important tasks carried out in the field of Inclusion, the European Commission granted SALTO-Belgium (Flanders) more resources in order to allow us to develop into a true SALTO Resource Centre on Inclusion. This development took place parallelly to the expansion of SALTO-YOUTH into a network of 8 Resource Centres.

The SALTO Inclusion Resource Centre increased its staff. Besides Tony Geudens, Ann Hendriks and Tine Van Roy from Jint (Belgian Flemish NA) now also work part time for the SALTO Inclusion RC (while keeping their other foot in the National Agency). Ann is expert on Inclusion and Tine will assist with the SALTO courses on Inclusion.

The collection of Inclusion tools (training courses, links, exercises, simulations, powerpoint presentations, background documents,...) continues and these resources online in the Toolbox for Training, Link List and European Training Calendar are growing constantly. In the Summer 2003, the SALTO-Inclusion Resource Centre started a specific SALTO Inclusion Newsletter for those people with a special interest in this field. Find some examples online.

The SALTO Inclusion Resource Centre was also present at several meetings and events in 2003 to present the available (inclusion) resources or to liase with relevant partners and to promote SALTO's work in the field of Inclusion.

• Selection Committee for large scale Action 5 (Brussels, December 02-January 03)observer
• Working Group on 'Accessibility of Youth Work' (Brussels, June-October 03) expert/practitioner
• European Youth Week "Youth In Action" (Brussels, October 03) SALTO stand, debate on inclusion, demonstration training tools
• NA Information Officer Meeting (Budapest, November 03) presentation of SALTO resources
• NA Training and Cooperation meeting (Bonn, November 03) presentation of SALTO resources, setting up cooperation projects for 2004

Trainers Online for Youth

The idea to have a central, user-friendly database to find experienced trainers for youth related training activities became real in September 2003. Even though the Trainers Online for Youth database is a useful tool for all SALTO priorities, it is particularly much used by the SALTO Inclusion Resource Centre which also coordinates the development of TOY.

• More about the TOY database here.