NAUČME SA POMÁHAŤ
Start date: Sep 1, 2016,
End date: Dec 31, 2018
PROJECT
FINISHED
Project "LET US LEARN TO HELP" is built on two pillars: an inclusion and its achievement by use of presence of animals at all partner schools. Our experience is that the presence of animals helps to improve physical as well as psychological state of humans. Canistherapy is practised at the veterinary school in the Czech Republic, apitherapy is provided at vocational school in Slovakia and the school in France practices hipotherapy.There has been an increased interest in people with physical or mental disability in the last decades, which is linked with the effort to improve the physical state and life of people with special needs. Positive effect of animals on the quality of human life is indisputable. We consider inclusion, which is the main pillar of our project, a process related to identification and removal of barriers and an effort to achieve success and happiness of all the children. Professional word for the positive influence of animals on humans is an animal assisted therapy - ANIMOTHERAPY. It reaches into healthcare, social care and education. Animals can be companions in various stages of human life, they can be of help to individuals with issues, they can stimulate for better results and they can heal.Our students work with animals on daily basis and it makes them empathetic, independent, perseverant as well as better and humbler. The skills gained during learning through experience of working with animals lead to increased ability of students to help the weaker, ill and disadvantaged. Relationship with animals knows no borders, national differences nor generation gaps. And it was the animals that drew together the partners in this project as well. Our schools provide education for students of various special education needs together with intact students. It is in the interest of each school to provide an education, qualification and practical skills, which will guarantee their employability and satisfaction with the work they do. Individual schools act as guarantees of certain area of positive animal influence (apitherapy, hipotherapy, canistherapy) and their skills and experience will be communicated mutually within the exchange of best practices. The target groups are our teachers, intact students and special needs students, who are an object as well as a subject of project main effort. The children as well as young people with special needs from close vicinity, their parents and lonely people will indirectly benefit from being involved in the project activities. The project consists of activities aimed at:1. the teachers – short-term training events for the employees – each school, as a guarantee of one kind of animotherapy, will provide the other partners with maximum knowledge and educational resources to enable the partners to teach and use the particular kind of animotherapy in question. 2. the students and teachers – within short-term exchanges of groups of students – each school will run one activity for students and teachers from partners‘ schools with the aim to test and amend the educational materials and methods if necessary, to gain certificates. 3. the students and teachers - within short-term exchanges of groups of students – with the aim to verify the skills of students during the work with the special needs‘ children, handicapped people and elderly lonely people. The results of the project include vocational preparation of pedagogic team and mutual exchange of best practices with the partners of the project, which will take place through educating our students. Students’ satisfaction and success will represent the feedback at the same time. The success of this project is connected to the results reached; however, we consider it to go well beyond the testing of educational materials and methods. From the long-term perspective we consider the main outcome of the project the incentive for complex change of mindset and approach of individuals towards the disadvantaged the students with learning disability and the students from socially deprived homes. Animals do not consider their differentness as disturbing and this is something we have to learn from them.