Aim of the myPart project is to enhance political participation of people with intellectual disabilities on the basis of Art 29, UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It states the right to political participation for all persons with disability. It requires ensuring that persons with disabilities can effectively and fully participate in political and public life on an equal basis with others.People with intellectual disabilities still face many substantial limitations in practising their political rights.The reasons for this situation are various. They can be found in barriers like in accessible voting procedures or in a lack of appropriate and accessible materials. Another reason can be seen in the fact that people with intellectual disabilities in some European countries still are excluded from their political rights like voting or standing for election. This is very often the case when they are deprived of legal capacity (law’s recognition of the decision making ability).Education pathways of adult people with disabilities often were marked by the transition into segregated work and residential settings with a lack of possibilities to acquire knowledge in civic education. The most important requirement for political participation is to understand the role of oneself as a citizen in the governmental form of democracy. The Workshop for Civic education with its combined and interactive learning forms is tailor-made to meet the needs of the target group in order to gain knowledge concerning political processes, but also to make experiences as active citizens.Another objective of the project is a cultural change towards a participatory conception of politics on a local, regional, national and European level. There is a high need of cooperation between the political, civic and disability field in order to shape inclusive policies and practices.MyPart is giving an impulse toward this direction by establishing Civic Circles as a format where people with intellectual disabilities, politicians and people of the community come into dialogue and learn from each other. The Policy Recommendations that are developed within the myPart project are the appropriate measure to transfer the gained knowledge on the national and European level.Essential in the design of the entire myPart project is ensuring the voluntary participation of about 60 people with disabilities, who are actively involved in the development of all outcomes of the project.At the beginning of the project Cooperation Groups are established, in these groups people with disabilities and project partners will reflect regularly on all outcomes and initiatives of the project.The synopsis of the methodologic approaches chosen for the project addresses the challenge to meet the needs of the target group. Elements of these methodologies are theatre-pedagogic sequences, on-film offers, easy-to-read material, social and cooperative learning and experimental learning.The myPart project leads to the following results:myPart Workshops for Civic Education: A curriculum for workshops is developed in the partnership with support of the Cooperation Groups and their initial aim is to address the needs of people with disabilities concerning civic education.myPart Handbook: The handbook in easy-to-read is aimed to people with intellectual disabilities and is a supporting material and the core medium for the workshop that is directly handed out to the participants.myPart Video Clips: short clips are developed by the partnership in order to facilitate the contents of the workshops in an easy understandable way by artistic and visual means.myPart Policy Recommendations: The aim of the Policy Recommendations is to collect and provide information and recommendations about the civic participation of people with intellectual disabilities on local, regional, national and European level.The most expected impact on the target group is the acquisition of citizenship knowledge and of social and civic competences. People with intellectual disabilities will identify the connection between their own personal life and their participation in political opinion forming processes. These experiences will lead to a stronger commitment to democracy. Public authorities and politicians play also an active part in the project. In the reciprocal learning settings of civic circles the importance of political participation of people with disabilities is becoming evident. New forms of political participation and inclusion will be experienced and can be taken into usual political practise. The long term impact of myPart is that people with intellectual disabilities will participate in opinion forming processes more actively (visiting assemblies, sharing initiatives, voting, standing for election) Apart from that the interests and needs of people with intellectual disabilities are politically taken into account in local, regional and social spaces.

<< Objectives >>This project aims to raise awareness among youth workers on the issue of adolescent mental health. We want to encourage them to set up awareness-raising and prevention actions by using innovative digital mediation tools. In this way, we will work to increase their digital skills, which are currently required in most professional sectors and in particular the education and training sector, and thus increase their chances of professional integration.<< Implementation >>We will implement activities that will raise awareness and implement prevention actions, train youth workers in mental health issues and in the use of state-of-the-art digital publishing tools and raise awareness among teenagers through interactive media exploiting the resources of storytelling and community reading.<< Results >>We expect the production of a set of resources for adolescents and youth workers: a prevention kit, a collection of good practices, pedagogical sheets, a self-assessment quiz, 5 interactive stories and a creation kit. The organisation of a training activity, workshops and dissemination events should contribute to changing our perception of mental health issues, involving youth workers in prevention actions and training participants in interactive storytelling tools.

It is estimated that around 25% of the population shows difficulties in reading comprehension for different reasons: intellectual, cultural, social, linguistic, etc. (OECD, 2017).International and national legislation as, e.g. the UN-Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, promote ‘easy-to-read’ as a fundamental right for equal access and inclusion. Recent EU legislature has made accessible information a responsibility of both the authorities and business enterprises, and in 2009, the “European standards on how to make information easy to read and understand”, compiled by Inclusion Europe were published.However, these rules and regulations were based more on intuition and purely theoretical notions of complexity (see Bredel and Maaß 2016: 67) than on empirical and experimental evidence. Moreover, many rules are defined quite vaguely, and some are in conflict with one another, for instance, reducing morphological complexity may increase phrasal complexity, which hampers the quality of EtR.Thus, the project directly targets two big groups: potential Easy to read (EtR) language translators and writers, who are responsible for the development of information for persons with permanently or temporarily limited reading proficiency and the persons with limited reading proficiency like, groups with special communication needs necessitated by cognitive or psychological impairment, low education or critical life events, such as forced migration, elderly people.The project aims at developing a comparative study of EtR ecology in project countries. All planned IOs of the project will have a comparative angle, thus ensuring an innovative perspective and outputs.The project developed by the partnerships of research institutions and NGOs sets the following enabling objectives that would logically lead to IO:1) to conduct a comparative study of the situation in the project countries regarding the acceptance of the EtR by persons with permanently or temporarily limited reading proficiency as well as EtR writers, translators and researchers on the one hand, and the acceptance of the EtR by the society at large on the other hand. The EtR survey will be launched at the onset of the project (Survey 1). The needs analysis performed at the pre-project stage clearly shows that general public at times tend to have reserved or even snobbish attitude towards EtR, and because of negative stereotypes also EtR end-users do not feel comfortable; thus, the project aims to break these stereotypes, make end-users comfortable with EtR and public supportive. The biased attitude towards the EtR among both, end-users and general public is directly related to the concept of social integration, and thus, the dissemination activities throughout the project aim to raise public awareness of the issue, through public discussions and media interviews, thus educating general public and shaping social opinion as well as the multiplier events at the end of the project are set to share the IOs of a project with stakeholders, who will communicate those to a wider audience.The Survey 2, conducted towards the end of the project and posing the same questions to the project target groups will provide for the measurement of the project impact;2) to devise a comparative study of EtR guidelines as to which of the rule are language specific and which are directly transferable, thus creating the grounds for the analysis of core shared and language-independent aspects which can form the basis of common European training contents. To meet these aim, the empowerment groups within the consortium will develop a research-based linguistic foundation at a more granular and operational level for Latvian and Lithuanian EtR, thus bridging the gap with the third member of the consortium (Slovenia);3) to compare the training opportunities for EtR translators in the project countries and develop an on-line course, which would give grounds to explore possibilities for future professional certification of EtR translators to enhance recognition of EtR translator career profile;4) to develop multi-language OER containing dictionaries of synonyms with recommended words complemented by the lists of semantic primes, EtR materials, which might be re-purposed in different training situations;5) to develop Graded Readers.6) to develop EtR level descriptors and performance standards;The international dimension of the project allows to ensure the best practice transfer acquired by the partners through other ERASMUS projects and offers a comparative angle to less spoken languages of the EU (LV, LT, SL). This strategic partnership aims at innovation and good practices to promote literacy and up-skilling through development of methodological and educational materials.Thus, PERLSI overarching goal is to improve the linguistic and communicative inclusion of cognitively disabled people, elderly people as well as people with other linguistic backgrounds.

<< Objectives >>SELSI aims to develop recommendations and strategies for linguistic support in spoken Easy language (EL) to support adult learners with additional needs in gaining important skills according to their abilities in most oral-based environments. Up to now, EL has been researched and practiced almost exclusively as a writing methodology. This makes SELSI one of the first attempts to deliver a rounded, academically grounded, and practically verified model of communication in spoken EL in Europe.<< Implementation >>First, SELSI will map the needs and resources for spoken Easy language (SEL) communication in Europe. This will allow the partnership to develop recommendations and strategies introducing innovative inclusive methodology. This will be pilot-tested in 3 national off- and online learning settings, with educators and adult learners with additional needs as validators. Finally, the recommendations will be fine-tuned based on the test feedback and introduced as a multi-lingual online tool.<< Results >>The main project result is a practical model of non-language-specific recommendations and strategies for oral communication in SEL, as an online tool. This will lead to major practical implications for language-specific adjustments in different language contexts. Reports, academic papers, and test sessions will be conducted. One of the key/desirable ''side effects'' of the project results will be reinforced European cooperation regarding accessible language and education in spoken settings.

TRAIN2VALIDATE is a strategic partnership in the field of higher education focused on one of the European priorities in the national context: social inclusion. The main goal of the project is the creation of new specific professional profiles for the production of easy-to-read materials (E2R materials): validators and facilitators. Validators are people who check the comprehensibility of final texts adapted into E2R, a methodology focused on producing contents easy to understand for people with reading difficulties (from people with intellectual disabilities to elderly, recent immigrants, low literacy or dyslexia, amongst others). Facilitators are supporters that help validators organise and develop their job and are connected to E2R writers to send them their amendments. TRAIN2VALIDATE originates from the development of Easy to Read (E2R) as an inclusive writing methodology that enables people with cognitive needs to access information. Until now, there have been relevant projects to include this solution as a tool for long-life learning (EU funded projects Pathways I and II) and to consolidate the role of the E2R writer (EU project EASIT). Globally, the International Standardisation Organisation is working on a standard for E2R, which is similar to that published in Spain in April 2018 (UNE 153101 EX) and to the DIN standard that is under development in Germany. While these efforts have put forward both the profession of E2R writers and guidelines, there is still a lack of training and recognition of the other two job roles involved: facilitators and validators.The specific objectives are to define the skills of facilitators and validators as professional roles; to propose a curriculum both theoretical and practical, fostering the creation of vocational and higher education courses as a possibility of inclusive long-life learning pathways; to create and validate specific open educational resources to learn and train to become facilitator or validator; and to propose different options of certification or degree at some stage.TRAIN2VALIDATE blends a group of complementary partners: HEIs, end-users’ organisations and a company specialised in certification. This is a balanced approach, because HEIs have experience in designing training, while end-users’ organisations have a deep knowledge in E2R, the current roles of validators and facilitators and educational needs that people with reading difficulties requires to achieve any studies. Additionally, the certification company will contribute to ensure that final results will be applicable beyond the end of the project. End users will be relevant participants, because they are beneficiaries of the expected outputs of the projects. All partners have an involvement in E2R, accessible or inclusive communication tools or education for people with reading difficulties, which is the main strength of the partnership.TRAIN2VALIDATE will produce the following Intellectual Outputs: a common methodological framework for the training facilitators and validators across Europe. (IO1); skills cards for both profiles in order to define the specific competences and abilities that a facilitator and a validator should possess. (IO2); a modular curriculum that will take into account teaching recommendations and guidelines as these profiles can be carried out by people with learning difficulties. (IO3); open educational resources in digital accessible formats with indications of learning strategies to support a successful programme for the target. (IO4); evaluation tools for these resources and recommendations about their implementation. (IO5); and possible certifications or strategies to develop some kind of degrees at some stage. (IO6). All project outputs will be at free disposal and download in the project website. Regarding IO development, TRAIN2VALIDATION is grounded in a solid methodology, with clear steps in all IOs, which guarantees the project results will be achieved. TRAIN2VALIDATE covers the second part of the E2R process, becoming a basic complementation and including an innovative perspective, as it proposes a specific profile in which only people with reading difficulties are the best for this task. The idea is transforming the view that a disability or a difficulty is a charge, on the contrary in this case it is a competitive advantage in order to perceive difficulties where others do not do it. These new eyes are a social benefit and let the quality of an E2R product improve. So, TRAIN2VALIDATE is built on the idea of social inclusion for global and social improvement. There are also several projects connected to accessibility to contents, but more focused on multimedia (LTA, ADLAB or ILSA). The achievement of standardised high-quality and cross-fertilised contents will help the consolidation of validators and facilitators as real professional profiles, boosting the relevance of easy to read in the field of accessibility as a professional activity.