Youth illiteracy is still rife in many countries, including the developed ones (e.g., functional illiteracy). It is crucial to keep in mind that literacy is not just the ability to read and write, but it also refers to the skills needed to fully participate in society. That’s what READ is about: improving young people literacy skills by developing their pleasure to read.
READ – Reducing social Exclusion through a creative approach to reADing aims at promoting reading among young people through creative local activities, the involvement of educators, artists, youth centres, schools and libraries. Youth workers and young people from each partner country (Italy, Austria, Slovenia, Kenya, India) will be actively involved in local creative laboratories and non-formal educational activities to increase their affection towards books.
In October, we started a local research on the State of Art about literacy and reading in each country and to identify existing good practices on the promotion of reading through non-formal approaches. The results drawn from these researches will be collected in a comparative report that will be the basis for the following project’s activities.
In order to organize the first steps of the project, representatives of all the partner organizations met in Palermo from the 16th to the 20th of November 2016 for the Kick-off meeting. It has been the occasion to discuss together about the project’s aim, target groups, main results and the implementation of activities. We also shared the main results drawn from the local researches on the State of Art among us and with the local community during a Public lecture.
The next step of the project will be the International Training Course in Palermo involving youth workers from all the partner countries. They will be trained to innovative art-based methodologies to work with youngsters to increase literacy levels and promote motivation to reading and learning.
The knowledge and skills acquired during the training course will be used by youth workers for the Local activities to be implemented in each partner country.
If you are a youth worker or a young person and you would like to have more information on the project, write to firstname.lastname@example.org
READ – Reducing social Exclusion through a creative approach to reADing is co-funded by the European Commission through the Erasmus+ programme, KA2, Capacity Building for Youth.