AIM (Associazione intercultura e mobilità)

AIM Agency for Interculture and Mobility is a social promotion association established on the 1st of April 2008 in Rome, founded by a group of young trainers experienced in non formal education at local and international level who had the great opportunity to start to work as facilitators, first for the General Directorate of International Affairs of the Ministry of Education (2006-2012). AIM is based in Rome where there's the main office and also have another space inside Spazio Europa but works both at local, national and international level. Especially at national level AIM works in close cooperation with schools of the italian territory, with regional offices of the educational field, institutions and non profit organizations. A team of trainers and media developers has been working in the last 3 years especially with Marche Regional office for Education in the long a precious process of the Forum of Adriatic and Ionian cities, in cooperation with schools of the national network of schools “Educate to Europe”, organizing seminars, events, trainings and information activities for students, teachers and school directors.

Since 2009 AIM works also for the Italian Representation of the European Commission and the Italian Information Office of the European Parliament inside SPAZIO EUROPA www.ec.europea.eu/italia/spazioeuropa. So called Europea Public Space where we promote and experience the European dimension of learning and we create a concrete bridge between formal, non formal and informal education. Every day a team of young facilitators carry on non formal activities with students, young people, adults and civil society. In the last two years we dedicated all our efforts in training and team building and we entered in direct contact with several schools (teachers, students and school directors), institutions and organizations.
Since 2006 AIM is in charge of the secretary’s office, communication and web-management of the National School-net “Educate to Europe” (Educare all'Europa), founded in Bolonia in 2005 by the Directorate of Foreign Affairs of the Ministry of Education in the frame of the National Programme Education and Training ET2010, for the implementation of non formal education and active European Citizenship.
AIM is partners of different institutions in the field of Education and Training such as regional offices of the Ministry of Education, foundations and training centres. It often cooperates with regional offices for education and foundations. In the frame of the European main guidelines of Education and Training (ET2020) and Key competences for the lifelong learning, AIM developed in the last year several local projects in order to raise awareness among young people, students and also adult on spirit of initiative, entrepreneurship, creativity social and civic competences.
In 2009-2010 we organized two Youth Exchanges (action 1.1 YIA), “Generation2Europe” and “LiveMarketplaces” and since September 2011 we have been coordinator of a Grundtvig Learning partnership on Mentoring with the project EMYA “European practicing of mentoring with young adults at risk of social disadvantage and drop out” www.emya-mentoring.eu . Starting from this moment AIM is specializing in Adult education and teachers training.
In 2012, we organized a Training for Facilitators “Empowering Youth for CreActive participation” (Sub Action 3.1 YIA), involving partners both from EU and Caucaus.
Since 2010 AIM is the official training association in charge of the facilitation of students and teachers involved in the project “Connecting Classrooms” http://www.britishcouncil.org/it/italy-education-connectingclassrooms.htm on youth leadership and active citizenship ( video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwLAoa_mTC0 ).
In the frame of youth mobility we are sending organization of evs volunteers and in the last 2 years we supported informal groups of young people to live non formal experiences in all Europe such as, for example, within the 1.2 “Europodcast” www.euro-podcast.eu with the Portuguese partner “Raise it Now” which contributed in the creation of a local radio in San Lorenzo (local district) called Radioscalo http://www.wix.com/radioscalo/home

LLP
From 2009 to 2011 AIM has been coordinator of "EMYA – European practises of mentoring with young adults at risks of social disadvantages and school drop-out" ( www-emya-mentoring.eu ) and the project awarded by the European Commission as Star Project 2012 thanks to the final product: a training kit for mentors that is downloadable from the website in different versions: e-book, graphic and printable.
Since September 2011, thanks to this strong partnership AIM is in charge of the local implementation and international development of the the Grundtvig Learning Partnership “The social Capital School. Parents, Volunteering and Community” ( http://socialcapital.europe2010-2020.eu/ ), in cooperation with the Parents association of the school Di Donato in the multicultural district of Esquilino (Rome).

In 2011/2012 AIM supported a team of teacher and a school in the frame of an interregional project, financed by the General Directored of International Affairs of the Ministry of Education on Creativy and Volunteering in didactics, mentoring and key competences among students, teachers and youth educators http://creativita.europa-2010.eu/

Through its trainers AIM is member of European networks as the Human Right Education Network and the pool of trainer of the European Youth Forum and of the Italian National Youth Council.

The association is structured in 3 areas: training, communication and international projects.

Our mission is to promote the implementation and the recognition of NON FORMAL EDUCATION through a concrete dialogue with the formal and the informal dimensions.
We strongly believe in mentoring and coaching between young people and adult educators and in teachers training.
Thanks to the great and long term experience inside Spazioeuropa (every days activity) and within schools, also at institutional level, we can every day experiment different methodologies which are considered as part of the tools of non formal education such us open space technology, theatre of oppressed, human rights education, global education, mentoring and coaching, the learning circle, youth policy development (structured dialogue) etc.
According to our mission we are involved in the European process of the validation of non formal education and we are getting experienced in the specific context which is defining the educational tools for the evaluation and certification (Youthpass, Europortfolio, European Qualification Framework and the ECVET).
AIM is deeply involved in the global, European and national context of the economic and social crisis that all the world is living: starting from 2011 we started a very fruitful cooperation with the National Council of Research (CNR-Ceris), the Institute for Development and Enterprises in order to realize concrete action for young people developing entrepreneurship, promoting mobility and training and helping them to have a direct contact with the labour market and placement sector.
In 2013, AIM became the official national coordinator of the European Project “Mobilizing Community: Joint actions to end poverty”, funding by the Open Society Foundations of Budapest an the “Europe for Citizens Programme” of the EU. The initiative seeks to support European community-based educational grassroots organisations that are able to mobilise their communities and public opinion around issues of marginalisation in education and help the most vulnerable groups of society. The Project gives European citizens active in the field of education and social inclusion the opportunity to interact among themselves, with policy-makers, civil society organization at the local, national and EU level. At the local level it pursues a community-based, participatory approach and seeks to involve a diverse array of educational grassroots organizations that work towards promoting soft factors for local development (culture, creativity, and innovation of citizens) and fostering local wellbeing through formal and non formal education. By convening people of diverse social and professional backgrounds, paying particular attention to the perspectives of disenfranchised groups, the project aims to enable those local voices not typically heard to become a part of policy discussions around educational issues, ensuring valuable interaction between EU decision makers and those directly affected by EU policies. This project is developed and implemented through the cooperation of a number of partner organizations, coming from both EU and extra countries, namely: Germany, Croatia, Austria, Italy, Hungary, Latvia, Albania and Romania. The project sees community level civic activism and the bringing of local voices in EU level policy debates as a transnational challenge within the EU, one that can benefit from comparing different national points of view, by giving the floor directly to persons from different national backgrounds. Ultimately, by benchmarking of successful community based grassroots models for local wellbeing generation, and capturing performance and progress in viable policy recommendations for the local, regional, national and European policy processes, we believe that expertise and good practice can be shared with others across Europe. The Project has been awarded the title of best practice project by EACEA, the Education, Audio-visual and Culture Executive Agency of the European Union.

The last European project that we joint as partner is "TALETE Talete. Teaching mAths through innovative Learning approach and conTEnts" ( www.taleteproject.eu ) and we are in charge of communication, promotion and we-mentoring for the Italian class of maths teachers. This project involves also the National Network of Schools "Educate to Europe"

In 2012 AIM grew as pool of people and we made a great afford in team building and self assessment: we are organizing in Febraury-March 2013 a teachers training for schools titled “Educate to the European Citizenship” sponsored by Spazio Europa with important institutions of the educational field ( http://ec.europa.eu/italia/spazioeuropa/notizie/formazione/educare_cittadinanza_it.htm ). We strongly believe in the use of ICT and media at school and the need of documentation for schools that are involved in the international cooperation. Furthermore we will organize in October a specific training for young people (multipliers for ngos) on Creativity and we will promote the use of videos and image to document and share.