Description
The project addresses school violence, bullying, marginalization of vulnerable children, drop-out in Bulgarian schools. The project aims at solving these issues by providing methodology for acquisition of social skills, conflict resolution, building and keeping healthy relationships in the form of a new programme. First, Zippy’s Friends Programme will be prepared for pilot launching in 12 schools in Sofia. The 12 schools will be identified, the 24 primary-school teachers/ psychologists trained, the methodology adapted and the programme introduced to the stakeholders. Second, the programme will be launched in 12 first-grade classes covering about 300 children. Third, a large-scale awareness-raising campaign will be carried out. Finally, a monitoring tool will be introduced. The project will benefit the target group of school children, teachers and parents by educating them and improving the school environment. The partner VfB will help with its expertise at all project stages.
Summary of project results
The project was necessary because it provided a solution to the unaddressed need of early intervention to cope with aggressive, deviant or challenging behaviour at school. It introduced Zippy’s Friends Curriculum to improve the mental health of children and their skills to cope with problematic situations in a healthy and constructive way. 300 children from 12 classes, from 10 schools in Sofia joined the project, acquired skills to identify, reflect and express their emotions and improved their skills to cope with various problematic situations. The teachers improved their expertise to cope with the difficult emotions and behaviour of the students. The parents took part in seminars which enabled them to get better understanding about the connection between undesired behaviour of their children and their emotions. Animus Association built capacity for work with Zippy’s Friends Programme by obtaining a license; 12 specialists were trained to teach teachers and a team of 24 teachers were trained to apply the programme and continue to work on it. The translation, adaptation and prepress of the textbooks will be used in the future. The success of the pilot programme made Animus Association apply the programme in other projects and training sessions of teachers. In addition, the experts of Animus Association took part in an international workshop which brought together professionals developing the programme across the world. As a result of the relations of cooperation and trust established with the partners, the project activities were performed in full. The relations between the partners will be kept. The project was carried out in partnership with Voksne for Barn, Norway (Adults for Children, Norway). For more information please, visit:
www.priatelitenazippy.com
Summary of bilateral results
The partnership between Animus Association Foundation (AAF) and the Norwegian organization Adults for Children (Voksne for Barn), for training and applying the programme Friends of Zippy contributed to the capacity building of AAF as a proactive organisation in international cooperation for developing of policies and activities for vulnerable groups as well as the international presence and capacity for sharing good practices and partnership in the sphere of psychological well-being and prevention of violence. This is the second partnership project between the two organisations, which further developed and strengthened the relations between the two organisations. For Adults for Children the realization of the project gave the opportunity to disseminate and multiply the good practice of the programme Friends of Zippy in a country like Bulgaria, where the policies and strategies for prevention of school bullying and violence are now being developed and expanded. As a result, the programme was introduced in 10 schools in Bulgaria within the framework of the project and will continue during next school years.