4. Educational Activities At School

Hands educational activities will be held during actual schooldays in the two partner countries after the achievement of the previous training program. The trained schoolteachers and other school staff, indeed, will implement project contents in their educational activity with adolescents, and a number of formal and non-formal opportunities (example: counselling meetings between students and psychologists) will take place at local level: Vilanova del Valles – Barcelona, Salerno, and Guidonia – Rome.

Due to the large networks owned by the partners at national level, it is also possible that part of these activities will additionally take place in other cities of Spain and ltaly. Project staff members, together with schoolteachers and other school operators trained during Activity 3, will be the subjects that will plan and organize the activities. Only the trained schoolteachers and school operators will be the actual educators at school (with possible few interventions of project staff members as ‘guests’). Though considering the actual differences of various school educational opportunities – to which different country specific strategies and regulations must be added – the partnership plans to achieve the implementation of educational programs where at least 10 hours of educational activities will be devoted to the HandS contents.

The activities will exploit the products of Activity 1 and Activity 2:

• the HandS transnational desk research;
• the e-training toolkit (it has to be remembered that it will contain intervention programs with educational strategies: exercises and activities to be used during activities with students, also downloadable and printable materials in PDF format).

During and at the end of the educational activities, specific assessment will take place in order to assess all relevant aspects of the activity (through the use of questionnaires, making on-site interviews, etc.).

HOW THE EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES AT SCHOOL ARE GOING TO HELP TO REACH THE PROJECT OBJECTIVES?

The implementation of the educational activities al school is one among the biggest final results of the HandS project. Here, indeed, the ultimate beneficiaries of the project are reached, ¡.e., students that can show behaviors related to suicide risk.

As if it happens for Activity 3 – Training program, this activity is important for a true and significant impact of the project on different levels:

• On the level of trained teachers and other school Staff (psychologists, school managers, counsellors), that can address their acquired new competences on the project topic to: 1) adolescent students at school; 2) their colleagues and other professionals in the field of school education;
• on the level of teenagers and adolescent students, that can: 1) directly benefit from the new educational/supporting approach with regard to possible suicide risk; 2) indirectly transfer to other students (in the family circle, with friends) the acquired knowledge on topics related to the phenomenon.

All this contributes to provide the project with a high-potential impact. Besides the opportunity, for the trained school staff, to continue adopting the acquired training on suicide risk aspects during their career as school operators for many years after their HandS experience (the project results will be maintained online for five years after the end of the project as free-to-use tools), the involved students will act as multiplication factor in terms of diffused knowledge, acquired awareness and personal and social skills.