Valteri school
This year's second COre-RElief Erasmus+ transnational meeting took place in Jyväskylä. Our three-day program focused on the Finnish educational centers for special needs children. First, we visited the Onerva school, where Riina Niutanen consulting teacher showed us around.
Onerva belongs to the Finland-wide network of Valteri schools, sustained by the Cultural and Educational Ministry. The Finnish school system is integrated, so Valteri's role is to give the necessary support to children to attend their local school. The majority of pupils however are permanent residents with mainly visual or hearing impairment, communication difficulties.
Spaces of the Valteri school
Spesia school
As we've learned from Simo Liikanen and Tiia Ollikainen, Spesia is a vocational school where students receive support to learn a profession and get employed. Spesia operates in four cities in Finland and has 1200 students.
The school runs a recycling market, a bicycle repair workshop and a store in Jyväskylä called Puoti, where products made by students are sold. The school mediates between students and the labor market.
At Experience Workshop's headquarters
At Experience Workshop's headquarters (co-working office Crazy Town), we've had online meetings with two projects which were included in the best practice compendium of COre-RElief.
"Abilitator" was introduced by Mari Haverinen. Abilitator is a self-report questionnaire for the evaluation of work ability and functioning. Go to the English language website. (Or take a look at the questionnaire in Finnish.)
We've also listened to the presentation by Sisko Rauhala of the activities of FAIDD – The Finnish Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (Kehitysvammaliitto).
Kristof Fenyvesi, EW's STEAM director held a workshop for project participants with STEAM toolkits and gave an overview of how they can be used with special needs children.
At the end of the 3-day meeting we ended up in the sauna on the lakeshore of Tuomiojärvi (map). Although there was still ice floating on the water surface, many of the participants were brave enough to jump into the water after the sauna! (Sauna+grilling - provided by Tavinsulka)
Erasmus+ CORE RElief (COmplex Reintegration of Employees with changed working abilities to REal LiFe)
Partners:
TENENET o.z. - Slovakia (coordinator)
Asociacija “Iniciatyvu tinklas” – Lithuania
Experience Workshop ay – Finland
Nevelok Haza Egyesulet – Hungary
Volkhochschule Bildungsinstitut – Belgium
Asociación para el Estudio y Promoción del Bienestar Social – Spain
KA204-A5638BD7
