TOY for Inclusion at ISSA Conference 2017
Giulia Cortellesi (ICDI) and Francesca Petrucci (Associazione 21 Luglio) participated in the ISSA Conference 2017 in Ghent (Belgium). They presented the TOY for Inclusion approach to an audience of early childhood education and care researchers, practitioners and policy makers from more than 60 countries. This year’s title was “Local Responses, Global Advances: Towards Competent Early Childhood Systems”.
TOY for Inclusion is creating non-segregated intergenerational play spaces in seven European countries: Belgium, Croatia, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Slovakia and Slovenia. These spaces are what we call early childhood education and care (ECEC) Play Hubs. Read more about the project here.
Giulia’s and Francesca’s presented the case of an ECEC Play Hub in Roma communities in Rome (Italy). They also discussed potential opportunities and challenges when applying the TOY intergenerational approach to Roma communities to promote social inclusion, intercultural dialogue and access to ECEC settings and primary schools. The presentation also shared different ways in which the TOY for Inclusion approach could be implemented in different contexts and countries.
The project’s Belgian partner VBJK (Center for Innovation in the Early Years) organized a surprise for Giulia and Francesca: they brought some of the children who joined the project in Belgium to the conference! They had a day out in Ghent.
Learn more about the conference here.