The general Project goal is to develop coherent society in Latvia by creating appropriate and friendly setting mechanisms for children and young people with special needs as well as their families.
The direct Project goal is to promote integration of children and youth with special needs in the local community, to improve quality of their education and reduce their exclusion by promoting advocacy of their rights and interests on the regional and national level.
The direct target group is children and youth with functional impairment (special needs).
The indirect target group is the families of the direct target group children and youth; because of their children’s invalidity they are socially excluded and cannot participate fully in various social processes, and educators.
Place of the project realization: Zemgale`s regions of Latvia (Jekabpils city and Vidusdaugavas region)
The main activities: variety of inclusive support events for the target group children and youth to help them to acquire social and cognitive skills; development and realization of innovative social services; improvement of the access to the informative environment, schooling of social partners (pedagogues, parents, social workers and other specialists) by using the Norwegian methodology Grunnlaget; activities which promote public awareness and active participation to advocate the target group rights; strengthening cooperation with the Norwegian partner to ensure long term sustainable operation.
The main planned results: the target group benefits both from the social effect of integration which comes from integration among peers and inclusion in different areas of life as well as from the effect of the cognitive development; their study results are considerably improved; training courses are developed and specialists have been educated; the local community target groups have been activated and educated on the issues of advocacy of rights/ provision of rights on municipal and national level; new services are developed; access to the informative environment are improved, etc.

Project results: The general Project goal is to develop coherent society in Latvia by creating appropriate and friendly setting mechanisms for children and young people with special needs as well as their families.

The direct Project goal is to promote integration of children and youth with special needs in the local community, to improve quality of their education and reduce their exclusion by promoting advocacy of their rights and interests on the regional and national level.

The direct target group is children and youth with functional impairment (special needs).
The indirect target group is the families of the direct target group children and youth; because of their children’s invalidity they are socially excluded and cannot participate fully in various social processes, and educators.

Place of the project realization: Zemgale`s regions of Latvia (Jekabpils city and Vidusdaugavas region)

The main activities: variety of inclusive support events for the target group children and youth to help them to acquire social and cognitive skills; development and realization of innovative social services; improvement of the access to the informative environment, schooling of social partners (pedagogues, parents, social workers and other specialists) by using the Norwegian methodology Grunnlaget; activities which promote public awareness and active participation to advocate the target group rights; strengthening cooperation with the Norwegian partner to ensure long term sustainable operation.
The main achieved results:
1) exclusion of the children and youth with disabilities has reduced through the implementation of 6 special inclusive events, involving 239 participants, including 80 children and young people with special needs together with their peers, parents and other community members; the target group has benefits from the social effect of integration which comes from integration among peers and inclusion in different areas of life;
2) the quality of education and the cognitive development of children and young people with disabilities has improved through the training of 42 Jekabpils educators and professionals how to work with children with special needs (including Grunnlaget (Norway) methodology) and providing them with advisory support;
3) 44 parents and representatives of the NGOs of children and young people with disabilities have been activated and educated on the issues of support for their children, cooperation and advocacy of rights/ provision of rights of children with special needs on municipal and national level;
4) access to the informative environment is improved by maintenance and replenishment of the special E-information point for families and pedagogues of children with special needs (http://www.iic.lv/e-punkts/)
5) "The policy settings, and courses of action for inclusion of the children and youth with special needs" for Jekabpils municipality is developed.