28th February 2022
Diversity+ project, of which Link Campus University is partner, at its core the Commission Recommendation on Investing in children: breaking the cycle of disadvantage and disengagement, with its overall mission to reduce disparities in accessing and engaging with Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) education, to create greater access for children in a disadvantaged situation.
This is due to the fact that ECEC facilities, approaches and services have not always been designed to meet the pluralistic needs of all children.
Consequently, Diversity+ looks to develop a complementary ‘top down’ approach which allows ECEC organisations to fully understand how different Diversity identities fit into their services, and so develop approaches which are fully inclusive to all, through desk and field research into current best practices and emerging trends across Europe.
Diversity+ has develop a tool called Charter, which represents a minimum requirement that Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) services and institutions must meet to accommodate different types of diversity and be classed as inclusive and diversity positive (Diversity+).
It is based on the Council Recommendations on High Quality ECEC and is organised around its five key themes: access, workforce, curriculum, monitoring and evaluation, and governance. It also includes the transversal issues fundamental to the development and maintenance of high-quality ECEC: image and voice of the child, partnerships, shared understanding of a quality and competent system, and reference to ten EU ECEC Quality Framework statements.
Find out more at http://diversity-plus.eu/toolkit/
The impact of the Charter aims to help ECEC providers developing an institutional culture which better understands the range of Diversity identities found in contemporary society and how they can improve their services and facilities to meet the needs of children.
Thus, this will help the project meet its wider impact aims of improving the social inclusion of Diversity groups (race, age, physical abilities, physical characteristics, diversity, family composition and sexual orientation, economic class, ethnicity etc.) who currently feel excluded from many ECEC offers.