Project Goals & Objectives

(a) The overall project goal is to organize a set of WS, where the SL concept is presented, adopted and implemented to tackle problems relating to

1. raising awareness for correct attitude towards PwDs and
2. enabling, promoting and guaranteeing their equal rights in line with the UN Convention on the rights of PwDs.

Primarily, targeted are educators and students. Thus,the WSs serve as training seminars for the educators. However, since each student can be regarded to as a potential future educator, especially students that major in education, pedagogy, special education and rehabilitation, we envisage conveying the SL concept to all levels of education.This is where we draw the sustainability of our project.

Finally, through the SL case-studies to be implemented in the project, impact on the wider community is inevitable.

(b) Implementation of the key project objectives:

1. The six WSs are the nexus tying the complete project and building the network among all project participants and relevant stakeholders. I.e. the WSs are where State Alumni and all project participants get acquainted with the SL concept and how it is implemented in practice.The final WS shall gather all stakeholders to present gained knowledge and learnt lessons from this project.
2. By inviting experts who are PwDs and by including students with special needs in the teams to work on the CS, we facilitate cooperation among students and educators with and w/o special needs.This way, we mutually help ourselves in raising awareness for the unconditional correct attitude, but simultaneously we spread the idea for the legal provision to diminish/moderate discrimination against the PwDs.This leads to identifying open issues in the related legislation and imply/suggest appropriate changes/amendments.
3. The aforesaid is further enabled by sharing information about individual needs of each category of PwDs.Positive practices, gained knowledge in the US and existing methodologies are utilized to identify and analyze various kinds of handicaps, understand, tolerate differences and include specific needs in the classroom, thus adjust teaching methods and suggest possible steps to make the learning and examining process easier for the PwDs.
4. While conducting the CS related research, teams learn about the status-quo in the education institutions, analyze how they can improve the physical environment & offered services to better adapt to the individual needs of PwDs.
5. Concurrently, students obtain training, gain competences and empower themselves on how to negotiate and initiate changes in their immediate community.Should the existing programs of the participating universities permit, students might obtain credits for the conducted research within a corresponding course.This increases their motivation for excellent performance.
6. Preparing and publishing guidelines for the educators/students facilitates correct attitude and mutual cooperation with the PwDs.Moreover, selected educators/students could directly be involved in this process, to excel the final outcome.
7. A website serving as an interface platform among all involved stakeholders, shall be prepared and its contents continuously updated throughout the project.Project related information, materials, guidelines, news, reflections shall be at hand to all participants.The website shall serve as information source for the required reporting and blog on and a continuous link to the State Alumni website.