France - European Inclusion Programme (EIP)
Project Partner: The “European Inclusion Programme (EIP)” is based in Paris and has existed as a non-profit organisation for more than 20 years. EIP works towards redressing injustices in terms of accessibility to opportunity – especially in the fields of non-formal education and training. Through encouraging the European networking of trainers and adult educators, they hope to empower organisations to play a more active and responsive role towards the inclusion of “challenging” groups in society in general – and within European programmes more specifically. members are mainly consultant trainers who operate on a freelance basis according to the needs of projects in progress. Active trainers are currently involved with coaching / mentoring and running European-level training activities – especially around topics such as the training of trainers / mentoring and coaching practice and techniques / learning to learn and the general personal and professional development of educators and trainers.
Specific expertise exists for supporting European networking activities which facilitate reflection on actions taken in the field of inclusion and non-formal education in general. This “action research” approach is one of their hallmarks. Not working directly with agencies at national level in France, EIP’s contribution to She Empowers is at a content-coordination level between the actual research and actions of the 5 participating countries, giving individual support to country coordinators, drawing comparisons and pulling out similarities and differences, analysing the successes and “interpreting” best practices for application in new contexts.
Hazel Low – EIP’s representative in the She Empowers project - has been involved in the European training field for 25 years – as community educator, trainer and coordinator of action research programmes. She has already coordinated 2 major action research projects at European-level - each for a period of 2,5 years - on the inclusion theme. These projects involved elements of project management, pedagogical development, training and networking of cross-sector actors from more than 10 countries in Europe. For the past 8 years, she was in the training team of the Salto NA Network long-term training of trainers (TOT) course and has recently been trained herself in coaching. As well as developing training modules around topics such as learning to learn and the one-to-one relationship, she has been particularly interested in the ongoing personal and professional development of trainers and has been offering distance mentorship to trainers and offering “personal and professional development spaces” for trainers and social educators.
This project has been funded with support of the European Commission. This website reflects the views only of the authors and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.