Search for European Projects

Training Railway Agents on INclusion in Stations
Start date: Sep 1, 2014, End date: Aug 31, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Since 2008, the twelve railway companies’ members of the “European Charter for development of social initiatives in stations” have shared concerns regarding persons living in highly precarious circumstances in the stations. Indeed, the presence of such a public is challenging the usual practices of railway agents in stations (service agents, security agents, maintenance agents, cleaning agents etc.). Several issues are common. Firstly, the agents working in station feel, more often than not, helpless when dealing with homeless persons. They express an urgent need of information on homeless people’s situation and training regarding the existing social intervention schemes and techniques. Secondly, the programmes already implemented in the railway companies have not been made durables or capitalised. Co-construction is at the heart of the “TRAIN in Stations” project. Its goal is to create and implement a common training programme, on the basis of what already exists and on the development of truly innovative modules, built from a common reflection shared by all the actors intervening in stations. The project aims at preparing the first European class on social intervention in stations, and to implement and evaluate a first training session in each company. Seven entities from five European countries are members of this project. Five railway companies, Bulgaria (National Railway Infrastructure Company), France (Société Nationale des Chemin de fer Français), Italy (Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane) and Luxemburg (Société nationale des chemins de fer luxembourgeois) and two NGOs : the Italian social cooperative Europe Consluting Onlus and the French non-governmental organisation Agence Nouvelle des Solidarités Actives. Each of these entities has a strong expertise regarding training and experiences of everyday social assistance and management. The project “TRAIN in Stations” lays on several transnational and regular meetings. In a concern for good governance, several collective workshops will be organised every five months in the cities involved in the project (Luxemburg, Paris, Rome and Sofia). The objectives of the meetings are: - Sharing knowledge and goof practices among national trainers (site-seeing) - Co-constructing the training programme - Planning a steering committee meeting, with one member representative These five European meetings will address different issues of the training session in order to build together with the trainers and the managers the common training program, and with the help of experts on social issues in stations. These meetings will be built on a clear co-constructive stance. In that regard, the national and sectorial diversity will allow a truly comprehensive reflection regarding the current practices. It will constitute a great richness for the constitution of a common project, based on points of view and experiences sharing. In order to achieve this methodological aim, different methods are to be used: focus-groups with homeless persons, active sites-seeing (exchanges with local social actors), capitalising and reflecting periods and construction time around concrete supports (such as e-learning or trainers’guide). The emphasis on practices’ capitalisation and needs’ analysis will allow the development of truly innovative methods and tools, adapted to the different European settings. The use of e-learning methods will facilitate this process. For each company, training programmes will be implemented which should make professional practices change. On an European level, the “TRAIN in Stations” project should steer and innovative dynamics between European companies, especially the ones signatory of the Charter. In the long run, the “TRAIN in Stations” project hopes to disseminate good practices regarding training programmes on the European territory and create a positive dynamics vis à vis social care for homeless persons.
Up2Europe Ads

Coordinator

Details

Project Website

5 Partners Participants