<< torna a Way to Society

Minutes of the meeting held on 26th September 2005

1. Introduction
The meeting opened at 9:30 am, as scheduled, and Ms. Grazzini welcomed and briefly introduced all of the people present.
The agenda included the following items for discussion:

• Equal Projects: presentation of the activities/state of the art
• Expectations and discussion about common topics and the potential for integration of the projects
• Appointment of the Project’s Steering and Evaluation Committee
• Project details and contents: presentation of the WP actions 5 and 6
• Project details and contents: presentation of the WP actions 1 and 2
• Project details and contents: presentation of the WP actions 7 and 8

2. Presentation of the partner projects
French Guyana’s partners proceeded to present their association – Samusocial Ile de Cayenne.
Samusocial was created in November 2003 and started in July 2004. It is linked with the Samusocial International, a worldwide federation of local Samusocial organizations. Its founding principles are reaching out to the people, giving them emergency care, sheltering them and helping them lay the basis for a brighter future. Its main objective is to offer an opportunity for social and professional integration to people who are homeless or otherwise affected by great exclusion. Its activities, which focus on the city of Cayenne, include mobile assistance teams patrolling Cayenne streets to collect disadvantaged people, providing them with social and medical care and directing them towards social and professional integration. Research on great exclusion to develop and promote innovative approaches is another field of activity. Samusocial also aims at establishing an effective network of local and transnational partners dealing with social exclusion and integration policies in order to engage political bodies and urge them to take action.

Ms. Tordovà from Slovak NGO Proti Prudu then gave a brief verbal presentation of the activities carried out by her organization.
Proti Prudu was created 4 years ago in order to help disadvantaged people escape indigence and find their way into society. It does so by trying to provide them with housing, counselling and financial support for medical care. In particular, they work towards creating “key” solutions that are not available elsewhere to the homeless/unemployed. Based on this objectives, they are carrying out: employment programs which include job experiences (a street paper is published and sold by the organization); individual and group work programs to develop their clients’ communication skills; prevention programs in which clients are monitored and offered support even after they have entered the labour market. Complementary activities are also organized, including PC, theatre and English courses. This should all lead to better chances of entering the labour market and accessing key services.

Question by Ms. Fellegara:
what is the main target of your organization?
Ms. Tordovà’s answer:
they provide assistance mainly to homeless and/or unemployed people from all over Slovakia. About 20 per cent of the people they deal with are women in their 40s and the rest are men of the same age with difficult past experiences (most of them were in jail or in a detention centre).
The same question was asked to Ms. Habran-Mery.
She explained that Samusocial deals with immigrants from neighbouring Latin American countries, French unemployed citizens and drug addicts. As far as childcare is concerned, she pointed out that the birth rate has increased in recent years (it is about 4 children per woman) and French Guyana is beginning to suffer from a lack of school facilities, also due to massive – and often illegal – immigrant influx. As French legislation grants all children a right to education, this has led to a situation in which extremely high numbers of children don’t have access to schooling.
Italian DP:
It was noted that what sets the Italian model apart from others is the relationship between public and private sector, the way partnerships are created, since such partnerships do not exist in Slovakia and French Guyana.
 Ms. Tordovà:
in Eastern countries, all social services are run by non-governmental organizations which receive little public funding and have to find alternative ways to fund themselves. They are therefore interested in getting to know the Milan private-public model with regard to responsibility division, cooperation between public and private subjects and service providers.

3. Expectations about transnational cooperation
Ms. Grazzini introduced the subject of transnational cooperation and all partners were asked to state their expectations with reference to such cooperation.
What follows is a summary of the expectations of the three partners:
ITALY:
The Italian partners offered, on the one hand, to give insights into the child-care services provided as well as private-public partnerships, ways to involve public authorities, training for women and ways to combine children and working life. On the other hand, they expected to be shown how to involve women in extreme conditions and where training experiences can be useful for the other projects. They also expressed interest in an exchange of experiences in the field of educational and social services.
SLOVAK:
The Slovak project’s representatives said they could present their services for homeless people and their families and children. They added their expectations were to investigate how to integrate homeless people and how to prevent homelessness and discrimination.
FRENCH GUYANA:
French Guyana’s expected to see and learn from other experiences, discuss policies to prevent discrimination, find ways to help the homeless and prevent homelessness. Another point of interest was to investigate methods for the setting-up of public-private partnerships and the cooperation between public and private partners. The Italian/Milan approach to training professionals was also mentioned as an interesting area.

All the partners agreed in this point:
The study visits would be the first step in disseminating training programs for trainers/professionals. The creation of 3 groups of key figures from each of the 3 countries was proposed, with the objective to learn from each other and derive important elements, experiences and problems. In order to work out possible educational processes, a discussion of:

• the needs and problems,
• the solutions, tools and methods (infrastructure) used to address them and
• the results obtained

would be needed.

4. Key figures to involve in study visits
All the participants agreed on the need to identify the key figures who should make up each delegation and establish more detailed programs for the visits. The representatives from each partner project presented their concept for a visit to their own country.

FRENCH GUYANA
A study visit to French Guyana could cover the following areas:

• a visit to 2 private, public-funded associations working with women and children
• a meeting with the Rector of the local University / IUMF
• public services in charge of providing assistance to women
• Samusocial: meeting local homeless people
• a meeting with the Municipality (Mayor/political level)
• meeting with consuls from neighbouring countries (Brazil, Haiti, etc.)
• private social services for the homeless

SLOVAKIA
A study visit to Slovakia could involve a “desk research” phase:

• introduction to the problems addressed (meetings with experts from female associations)
• introduction to homelessness
• social reforms underway

and a “field research” phase:

• meetings with local homeless people
• visits to educational and training services
• final discussion

Ms. Tordovà explained that such a visit would last 4 to 5 days. Ms. Fellegara asked her what other partners worked with Proti Prudu. She answered that her organizations cooperates with two other NGOs: Social Work – a training body – and the Community Development Centre, whose goal is to engage all of the different key institutions (in particular public and private institutions) to establish and develop networks/partnerships between them as well as dealing with employment issues.

ITALY
A study visit to Italy could cover the following areas:

• women and children (services and education)
• services addressing homelessness / social issues, both from an educational point of view and possibly from the point of view of social service providers
• meetings at an institutional level in order to show how cooperation between public and private sector is created
• meetings with the service providers – associations, companies and agencies providing and managing services on a public-private basis

A visit to Italy would therefore be divided into different levels:
- Meetings with public authorities on an institutional – and educational (as Ms. Mantovani noted – level, on the one hand, and associations and businesses (service providers) on the other hand would lead to an insight into how the institutional level affects the areas covered by the Equal project, such as families, social matters, homelessness, training for trainers/professionals, etc.)
- Dialogue processes between civil society and public and private sector could also be investigated with a view to the development of strategies and possible actions in the educational sector. Actual documents and agreements between public and private bodies could be submitted to the French Guyanese and Slovak partners, since they could represent innovative approaches to them.
What follows is a summary of the comments of the partners:
As far as the Slovakian partners are concerned, it would be useful to try to organize meetings with associations dealing with homelessness in the Milan area, especially organizations working within a network, in order to enable them to see how such networks operate.
Ms. Habran-Mery noted that the French DP would be interested in getting to know the nursery school model of the Municipality of Milan, with particular reference to the relationship between public and private subjects. Attention could also be focused on training, with the support of Università Bicocca and the Municipality of Milan. A contact between the French Guyana University and Università Bicocca involving the rector of the IUFM (university training service for teachers) could also be beneficial. Ms. Mantovani suggested that a meeting with the people managing a multicultural nursery school in Milan could be organized and that social training and social education could be made main focal points.

5. WP Study visit
Ms. Grazzini, on behalf of the Italian DP, made 3 proposals to the Slovak and French Guyanese partners relating to the study visit schedule:

• to organize 3 study visit (one for each country) by February, 2006;
• to make the first and second visits to Slovakia and French Guyana and the third one to Italy;
• to organize different groups for the visits, to involve different people (e.g. political-level delegation or technical/expert delegation) in different moments.

Ms. Tordovà rejected the first proposal because her organization would not have been able to organize any visit before September/October, 2006. Time and budget restraints would also prevent them from organizing more than one visit. Similarly, Ms. Habran-Mery and Ms. Borel explained that no visit to French Guyana could be organized before February/March, 2006 due to organizational matters.
The idea of the Slovak partner was to combine all the activities in the same session (study visit + working group + big meeting)
The partners decided to stop this point and to postpone it to the following day.

6. Draft agenda for the meeting
A tentative agenda for each meeting was defined and agreed upon as follows:
Duration of each visit: 5 to 6 days, divided into the following activities:

• Study visits: 2 to 3 days
• Working groups: ½ to 1 day
• Mainstreaming and evaluation: ½ to 1 day
• Steering and evaluation committee: 2 to 3 hours
• Website, observatory: ½ day

About the methodology of each meeting, Ms. Habran-Mery proposed that the transnational cooperation work should be divided into 3 phases: in the first phase (“sharing”) all partners should share information, experiences, data and visit the other partners’ projects; in the second phase (“actions”), each DP should take local measures based on the results of the first phase; in the third phase (“final event”) the measures taken and their results should be evaluated and proposals for improvement be made.

6. Website
Ms. Spigno from Italy (Conform) asked Ms. Tordovà to present the Slovak DP’s suggestion concerning the creation of a common website for TCA Way to society.
Ms. Tordovà said that the goals of the website is to create a communication platform between the TCA partners to enable them to share their experiences, best practices and project outcomes with the general public. The website has its targets in all TCA project partners, organisations working in the same field or planning to do so in the future and decision makers and people responsible for social welfare systems with a focus on social exclusion.
The structure of the website will contain a section providing basic information on the TCA (common objectives, transnational activities, events, evaluation, etc.) and on each DP (short description, organizations involved, links to the English version of local Equal projects, contacts, etc.). Two other sections will be dedicated to Observatory activities (based on reports sent by observatory project leaders every 3 to 6 months) and to a newsletter by observatory project leaders which will be released and posted on the website every 6 months. Examples of good practices and stories about clients who were successfully integrated into society etc. could be presented in an “on-line observatory” section. The website will be complemented by useful links to other subject-related Internet pages that could be useful for the website users and visitors.
Ms. Tordovà requested all partners to hand in the material they want to post on the website by the end of October, 2005, and, in any case, at least a month in advance of the event it refers to. She also suggested that DP partners should send stories and pictures concerning their clients every 6 months for inclusion in the “on-line observatory” section.
Proposals regarding the name of the website will be submitted to all partners, who will then choose the final name.

7. Conclusion
The agenda for the following day was defined and agreed upon. The opening of the session was brought forward to 8:30 am. Ms. Grazzini closed the meeting at 6:30 pm.