Intercutural mediation is one of the most important area of the CReA onlus Association. The activity is funded by many projects, at local, regional, national and European level. In this case, it is worth mentioning the 2011 “ACUME-Advancing cross Cultural Mediation”project, financed at European level by the Leonardo Da Vinci program, which allowed the training and employment of 60 mediators. Many of the mediators who today actively collaborate with the Association, have obtained the certificate of professional qualification thanks to this project. CReA mediators come from many parts of the world and have many years of experience. They are qualified and professional people.
Furthermore,many of them are well integrated into society and represent important leaders and reference points for their communities, to which they can turn to for information of any kind.
To underline the importance of intercultural mediation for CReA, it is worth mentioning the project “Knowing, guiding and supporting. From needs to services” now in its tenth edition, which takes place in the RMG5 District. The project provides for interventions of intercultural linguistic mediation in the schools of territory and interventions, twice a week, of a Nigerian mediator and a Romanian mediator, at the clinic, the Pua and the STSMREE of Palestrina to facilitate the communication when there are linguistic problems
Education and training
Teaching italian for foreigners (L2)
The italian teaching as L2 represents one of the action area of the Association. CReA carries out this teaching activities by collaborating with many DITALS certified teachers, thanks to the funding of projects at regional, national and european level. The recipients of the courses, which range from pre-A1 to B1 level, come from many non-European countries and in most cases they are people with vulnerabilities, who have come to Italy to find a better future. The participation to these courses reresents for them not only a moment to learn another language, but also an oppurtunity for social and cultural openness, even with people or other ethnic groups. The courses, which have an average duration of about 60-100 hours (depending on the level), grant a certificate upon passing a test. This is a very important factor given that for the issue of the residence permit, the migrant must present a certificate of A2 knowledge of italian. In the basic level courses, the students can enjoy the presence of multicultural mediators, that are able to help them with language problems. At the same time, mediators help these people to extricate themselves from bureucratic difficulties they may encounter in health (Consultation centre and Single Access Point) and social (Municipality and Prefecture) services. The degree of success of these courses can be clearly seen from the degree of satisfaction that the people show. They finally feel an integral part of society and have greater confidence to create their own path in the new country
Non-formal education
Education is an ongoing process that encompasses every sphere of life and is not limited to school or teachers’ lessons. The CReA association, among its activities, leaves ample space for what is defined as non-formal education, that is education that is not part of the curriculum envisaged by formal education.
The school education is mainly based on learning processes between the one who has the knowledge and transmits it, the teacher, and the one who receives it, the student, in a vertical setting. Instead the non-formal education it stages relantionships and processes of a horizontal nature, characterized by exchanges and interactions between students, educators, animators and young people, in a perspective of self-education and, above all, co-education. Two key points of non-formal education are certainly the active partecipation of learners, who are called to be the decision-makers of their education, and the methodology of learning-by-doing thanks to direct experience, thanks to getting your hands dirty in the first person. Recognizing oneself as protagonists in the development of one’s life and, consequently, also of the things that happen around us ( at every level, from the local to the global), allows you to have a broad view of the world, to develop critical thinking and to feel called to act personally to improve our reality. Furthermore, the fact of cooperating, interacting and mediating, as promoted in the fields of non-formal education, encourages the ability to relate, to work in groups and to perceive oneself as a part of a global reality, in a climate of interrelation and interdependence
The Feuerstein method
Metacognitive enhancement and the Feuerstein method
Some members of CReA, specially qualified, use a standardized corpus of tools called Feuerstein Instrumental Enrichment (FIE) created by Reven Feuerstein. This program, used in over 100 countries in the world, allows you to simultaneously verify the permanence of concepts and the practice of tools connected with schooling. The Feuerstein method is characterized as one of the first metacognitive approaches to appear in education and rehabilitation and is currently being tested in all those situations in which it is necessary to strengthen human resources, such as the educational, business and rehabilitation fields. The method is based on the belief that each individual is modifiable and can enhance their cognitive processes, activating still latent resources. This path is made possible by the presence of a mediator who facilitates the process of learning to learn
Cooperation
For CReA onlus, international and local cooperation are two sides of the same coin that help to increase processes of equity, social, economic and cultural inclusion.
CReA has been active for more than 10 years both locally and internationally, trying to promote coherence of action between local and global that is one of the objectives of the agenda 2030.
Our president is also the vice-president of CIPSI, a coordinator of popular international solidarity initiatives, a member of the Board of CONCORD Europe and the italian referent for the ECG. In the last 5 years we have coordinated and participated in various local, national and international projects as FAMI, Erasmus PLUS, AMIF, Europaid, AICS funds
