V.IN.E - Vocational INCLUSIVE Education
V.IN.E - Vocational INCLUSIVE Education is an Erasmus+ Small Scale Partnership. It started on 1st of March 2023 and lasted until 30th of October 2024.
inclution.org cooperated as a lead partner with the the German-Turkish Twin City Association in Germany and with the district administrations of the municipalities of Sisli (district of Instabul) and Tepebasi in Eskisehir in Turkey.
We shared our knowledge and best practices in supporting and promoting inclusive Vocational Education and Training (VET) for people with special educational needs (SEN). inclution.org brought in the experience from our involvement with the networking project stattWERKstatt.
We focused on the target group of learners with intellectual disabilities. Our goal was to transfer a practical part of the MYS-Toolbox, a web-based tool on social inclusion for educators, into a turkish language. This is now free available online as OER.
Final Meeting in Berlin in October 2024
The final meeting of our partnership V.IN.E - Vocational Inclusive Education - took place in Berlin on 10 and 11 October 2024.
The mayor of Tebepasi, Ahmet Atac, his deputy Erdal Sahbaz and the head of social affairs, Inci Celiskan, took part on behalf of the district. The Sisli district of Istanbul was represented by Göksu Dinc, Head of Foreign Affairs, and his colleague Ayse Yavuz. We visited the Interaktiv association and gained an insight into the ateliers of the inclusive theatre Thikwa in Berlin-Kreuzberg.
The final meeting was also dedicated to evalute the overall V.IN.E project and to discuss the outlook and a sustainable exploitation of the project results.
We agreed that the focus on people with disabilities in vocational education and training is important and requires good concepts, real strategies and sufficient resources for implementation. The exchange and insights into examples of good practice on both sides were important in order to reflect on our own actions at local level and to learn from each other. We were able to involve stakeholders on both sides in the project activities and strengthen and stimulate networks both locally and across borders. At the specialist staff level, we were not only able to learn from each other. Four face-to-face meetings and numerous online meetings have created sustainable professional networks. We have created a sustainable educational tool to strengthen social inclusion in vocational education and training - the Me and Your Stories (MYS) Toolbox in Turkish. It is freely accessible and can be used as an open source product.
All partners emerge from the V.IN.E partnership stronger than before. Initial ideas for further potential joint projects were discussed at the final meeting. We will endeavour to further promote inclusive vocational training at the municipal level as one of the priorities. This commitment will be reflected and further developed within European cooperation.
MYS-Toolbox is a web-based application of instructions and tools to strengthen social inclusion through multimedia storytelling. It is a practical collection of group exercises and tools. As part of V.IN.E, we created a Turkish-language version of the practical part of the toolbox: MYS-Storytelling. The MYS toolbox was developed as part of the Erasmus+ KA3 project ‘Me and Your Stories - MYS’, in which inclution gUG participated as a partner between 2019-2022.
In this work package, we cooperated with the RIX Research and Media Centre, the provider of the MYS Toolbox interface at the University of East London (our partner from the EU MYS project). After the relaunch of the RIX wikis, carried out by RIX Centre, we created a Turkish version with its own URL. The instructions for group exercises have been translated into Turkish in co-operation with our Turkish partners.
The MYS-Toolbox is freely accessible as OER under creative commons licences BY, NC and SA.
Study visit to Turkey in March 2024
The two district administrations in SIsli/Istanbul and Tepebasi in Eskisehir invited us from March 4-7, 2024 to get to know their projects for the professional integration of people with disabilities.
We were joined by representatives from the districts of Treptow-Köpenick and Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, the Senate Department for Education and the Association of German-Turkish Town Twinning.
As the central government in Turkey does not provide any vocational training opportunities or structures for people with disabilities, local authorities are developing projects on their own initiative. The Life Village and the Rainbow Café in Tepebasi, neighborhood projects and the Café Down in Sisli - we have summarized our impressions in a report. To the report.
V.IN.E Interim Report - January 2024
At the halfway point of our V.IN.E project, we have summarised the activities and interim results to date. The kick-off meeting (March 23) and the study trip to Berlin (Sept 23) are behind us. A study trip to Turkey (March 24) lies ahead of us. We are working on the transfer of the MYS toolbox. Click here for the interim report with some insights into how we are working and what feedback we have already received.
If you scroll further down this page, you can find out more about the individual V.IN.E project work packages and access our reports and photos from the project milestones
V.IN.E in Action
On the tracks of inclusive vocational education - Study Visit in Berlin, September 2023
From 27-29 September 2023 we accompanied a delegation from Turkey, 16 representatives of the district administrations from Sisli/Istanbul and Tepebasi/ Eskisehir. Within the framework of our Erasmus+ project V.IN.E (Vocational Inclusive Education) we prepared a three-day study trip. The V.IN.E project started in March 2023 with a kick-off in Istanbul. Over 20 months, we exchanged ideas about success factors of inclusive vocational education at the municipal level in both countries. On September 26, the delegations from Sisli/Instanbul and Tepebasi/Eskisehir arrived in Berlin, led by the two district mayors Muammer Keskin and Ahmet Atac.
Besides the visit to the Berlin House of Representatives and the Turkish-German Business Association, the visit to the inclusive vocational school August-Sander-Schule was one of the highlights of the study trip. We got to know the inclusion advisory service of the Berlin Chamber of Crafts, the civil society advisory organizations MINA e.V. and Interaktiv e.V., talked about the stattWERKstatt initiative, visited the inclusive Bistro der Lebenswelten in the Humboldt Forum and got to know the state working group of inclusion companies in Berlin. We visited the Disabled and Rehabilitation Sports Association Berlin and took a tour of the Olympic Stadium.
Read the report of the study trip hier.
View the Fotoalbum of the study visit hier.
Video Reports from the Study Visit in Berlin, September 2023
Click in our video reports and get some nice impressions from the study visit of the turkish delegation in Berlin.
Kick-Off Meeting in Sisli/Istanbul - March 2023
20.03.2023 and 21.3.2023 - Kick Off Meeting of the Erasmus+ small scale partnership V.IN.E. - Vocational Inclusive Education with the Municipalities of Sisli (Istanbul) and Tepebasi (Eskisehir) in Istanbul/Turkey .
We are starting an Erasmus+ partnership with the Municipalities of Sisli in Instanbul and Tepebasi. Just one year ago we have worked on the EU application for this project. The first submission did not make it. So we have improved the project proposal and successfully submitted the application in Oct22 by the National Agency of the European Commision in Germany for Vocational Education NABIBB.
Thanks to Özcan Mutlu, who enabled the connection with Sisli and Tepebasi and supports the cooperation with the German Turkish Twincities Association, which he is leading as a president of the board. The german-turkish journalist Murat Tosun joined our Kick off meeting of V.IN.E. too.
First day of the meeting we met at the City Hall of Sisly to meet our ptoject group and the colleages from the Municitpalities of Sisli and Tepebasi. On the next day of our visit we have met the mayor of Sisli, Mr Muammer Keskin, and the mayor of Tepebasi, Mr Ahmet Atac. Together we have visited a job market for people with disabilities in the City Hall of Sisli. We have shared stories of best practice how to include people with disabilities on the free labor market. We also shared personal stories and celebrated #worlddownsyndromeday together. We are very thankful to our turkish partners to give us such a warm welcome. In September we will meet with both turkish delegations in Berlin.
In our minds and in our hearts we are with the victims of the earthquake. The real number is hard to believe. The mobile phone providers lost the connection to about 300.000 phones. The loss is undescribable...
Two study visits are planned in Berlin and in Sisli/Tepebasi, framed by the Kick-off meeting in Sisli and the final meeting in Berlin. A Turkish version of the "Me and Your Stories" toolbox, developed in our previous Erasmus+ project "MYS", will be modified and translated into Turkish as a practical web-based tool for VET professionals to support inclusive career planning for learners with special needs.
Disclaimer
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.