News

The PREVENT project board game is ready and now available

The products of the PREVENT project have been successfully completed: the guidelines for the game, the game master booklet and the guide for using the elements of the Forum  Theater Method.

The materials are freely available in the project results section.

The online closing event of the PREVENT project was a success

The online national project closing event of the PREVENT project took place on April 21, 2021, from 6 pm to 7 pm, there was great interest among the professionals. The aim of the project, the history and development of the project’s internationalization, and the role of the participating partners were presented at the event. The description of the characters developed for the game was explained by Mária Bognár, the expert of the project, within the framework of an exciting presentation. Participants were able to gain insight into the online version of the created simulation board game and the 4 characters tested in Hungary with the help of two volunteer testers of the game and the experiences of one of the project’s volunteer referees of NFSZK Nonprofit Ltd. Lejla Nagy. There was also a discussion of the usefulness and future of the game. During the online event, participants were able to continuously ask their written questions, to which they received immediate professional answers from the project’s expert. The final program was mostly attended by professionals open to the topic, who were interested in the possibilities of using the board game and its possible target groups. Several of them have indicated their intention to try out the game, as well as to incorporate the experience gained during the design into other developments. The final conclusion of the PREVENT project will be an online conference with international partners summarizing the experiences and the physical realization of the interactive board game.

The experience of online character testing, as young adults could learn about the subject of abuse by playing

On November 18 and 25, 2020, the “Prevent Bullying and Abuse” (PREVENT) project reached another milestone, as the game and four-character testing also took place online. During the preparation for live testing, the covid-19 virus situation deteriorated steadily, and testers had to respond immediately. Although there are two basic versions of the game: a board game and a forum theater method, both build on the live game mode. As a first step, a new method that can be applied in the online space was created, which incorporated elements from both methods. Then, on November 18 and 25, 2020, as part of online test sessions, volunteer players got to know 4 different foreign characters who applied for the test sessions advertised on the social site. During each game, the testers went through a story of 1-1 characters, four separate times, each lasting approximately 2 hours. Warm-up games greatly aided in evoking emotions, strengthening one’s position as the protagonist, and initiating verbal expression. However, most of the playing time was spent painting the characters and their situations, as well as the answers to them and discussing common decisions. The volunteer testers judged that a very exciting game was created within the PREVENT project, the usefulness of which cannot be questioned, since no one likes to talk about abuse, this game yet helps to start serious thinking on this topic playfully. However, everyone loves to play.

Dissemination Group

During the second online meeting, the participants of the project decided to create a group to make their dissemination activities more efficient, whose task is to coordinate, plan, and control the dissemination activities. The group is led by Theater Tsvete.In the dissemination group, each partner organization is represented by one member.

The second online partner meeting 

Our project team again held a meeting in the form of a Zoom organized by NDSPC Non-profit Ltd. The date of the meeting was 27 May 2020. All our partner organizations took part in the meeting: AE2O (Portugal), BBU (Romania), E2C73 (France), KKU (Denmark), OFOE (Hungary), TT (Serbia). At the meeting, a new person from the French partner was introduced to take part in the rest of the project. The main points of the discussion were: raising a possible partner meeting in September, discussing character translations, experiences of two versions of the board game (KKU – Danish partner, OFOE – Hungarian partner), experiences of the forum theater version of the game (TT-Serbia, AE2O – Portugal, BBU – Romania, E2C73 – France), comments on the development of a glossary and guidelines, tasks related to the formation of a dissemination group.

The first online partner meeting (transnational partner meeting no. 5.) 

After the postponed partner meeting in Cluj-Napoca, the project team held another meeting. Due to the extraordinary virus situation, this time online. The meeting was organized in the form of a zoom meeting by the team of NDSPC Non-Profit Ltd., which coordinates the project. The date of the meeting was 6 May 2020. Everyone from the partner organizations was represented at the meeting. The main topics of the meeting were: discussion of the COVID-19 situation for foreign partners and their tasks, tasks related to the second interim report of the project, the deadline for sending technical and financial supporting documents, plan to set up a dissemination group with one delegate per partner country. The meeting proved successful both in terms of content discussion and online forum. The next online meeting will take place on May 27, 2020.

THE FIFTH TRANSNATIONAL PARTNER MEETING WAS POSTPONED

The fifth transnational partner meeting was postponed due to the growing danger of the Covid-19 pandemic. The date of the planned meeting was 10-11 March which hosted by Babes-Bólyai University in Cluj. There was a small inquiry among the partners in the earlier week about their flying facilities, the extension of disease in the different partner countries. Considering both the national and international situations, the news from the partner’s authorities, and personal safety reasons,  The common final decision was: POSTPONEMENT. It was just in time, just before travel restrictions and other related rules came into force in the different countries.

The main topics of the planned program were:

–      Learning about strategies to prevent and confront school violence and bullying in Romania

–      Discussing and concluding the second test events of Prevent simulation game (including its content and the applied methods in the different partner countries)

The Prevent partnership has turned to online communication mode since March, like schools and other institutions. We had to wait for a while to continue the project work as most of the partners are school people who first had to cope with online/distant teaching. But as soon as all partners have to get over their first shock of online teaching and the different national restrictions because of the disease, the project work is going on again.

Important progress in Portugal

The fourth international partner meeting of the Erasmus+ project named ‘Prevent bullying and abuse’ (PREVENT) was organised from 30 September 2019 to 3 October 2019 in Matosinhos, Portugal. The consortium of 7 partner organisations continued its joint work to develop a simulation game for young adults with great success.

The aims of the simulation game will be to let young adults know about such vulnerable groups like people living with disabilities, migrants, poor people etc. and to make them more sensitive about the potential abuse situations suffered by these vulnerable groups, and also to get them thinking about this topic and to stop them to be an abuser, and to give them some good tools on how to handle these situations in their everyday lives.

The Portugal meeting was organised with the aims 1.) to make the partners familiar with the Forum Theatre method; 2.) to test the development of the gamification idea of the Hungarian partner organisation, OFOE; 3.) to prepare together to the second test round which is to be held by the partner organisations in their home country; 4.) to further develop the new characters and situations developed by the partner organisations; 5.) and to define the tasks and deadlines of each partner until our next partner meeting in Cluj-Napoca, Romania on next March.

Thanks to the active and effective co-working of the partnership, we were able to meet all the expectations and reach all the aims of the meeting, and we made important steps forward in the development of our sensitising tool. It was very exciting for all members of the partnership to be introduced into the world of Forum Theatre by our well experienced Bulgarian partner, Theatre Tsvete, and discover together the connecting points between this exciting method and our simulation game.

It was also an added value of our project, that we had the opportunity to join the celebration of the host organisation, AE2O who shared with us their big special moment. Their Second Chance School has been the first one in Portugal for many years and still the only one being a part of E2C network.

For more than 10 years the AE2O efforts were dedicated to the recognition of the necessity of having Second Chance Schools in the public educational system. Due to our persistence and hard work, this summer a new law was published and it established the new legal framework for Second Chance Schools in Portugal. There are two more schools opening their doors this year for students needed second chance in education.

On 2 October 2019 the new protocol following the rules established by the new law was signed in their school, and it was a pleasure for the partnership to be part of this nice celebration where also the Portugal Secretary of State of Education and the mayor of Matosinhos, as well as members of AE2O were present.

New motivations from France

The third international partner meeting of the Erasmus+ project named ‘Prevent bullying and abuse’ (PREVENT) was organised on 12-14 June 2019 in Chambery, France. After a nice opening ceremony in the city hall of Chambery and a motivating and inspiring speech from the deputy mayor of the city, Mrs Nathalie Colin-Cocchi, the consortium of 5 partner organisations continued its joint work to develop a simulation game for young adults.

The aims of the simulation game will be to let young adults know about such vulnerable groups like people living with disabilities, migrants, poor people etc. and to make them more sensitive about the potential abuse situations suffered by these vulnerable groups, and also to get them thinking about this topic and to stop them to be an abuser, and to give them some good tools on how to handle these situations in their everyday lives.

If you have such big aims in a project, then of course, you have many things to do and that was the case also in Chambery during our partner meeting. So after the inspiring speech of the deputy mayor, on 13 June 2019 the consortium continued its joint work with renewed motivation and sense of mission. We had many aims to reach also regarding the current partner meeting, such as to discuss the new characters, and give some suggestions on modifications to each other; to listen some good ideas about gamification and makes some steps forward in this content; to get to know the Forum Theatre methodology and tries it with a short play; to discuss the first draft version of the Guidelines; to finalise the Dissemination plan and the Leaflet; and also to prepare each partner for the submission of the Interim report.

So the programme of the meeting was quite busy, but thanks to the active and effective co-working of the partnership, we were able to meet all the expectations and reach all the aims of the meeting. At the end of the second day, the partner said goodbye to each other and went home to continue to work on the intellectual outputs until the next partner meeting which is to be held on October 2019, in Portugal.

Progress in Denmark

Prevent Bullying and Abuse (PREVENT; KA2+2018-1-HU01-KA204-047719) is a big Erasmus+ project implemented from European Union fund by a consortium of 7 partner organizations from 6 different countries (Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, France, Portugal and Denmark) led by FSZK Nonprofit Ltd.

Our project started in 2018 and will end in 2021, and the main goal of our project is to develop a simulation game for young adults to let them know about such vulnerable groups like people living with disabilities, migrants, poor people etc. and make them more sensitive about the potential abuse situations suffered by these vulnerable groups. We want to reach these goals by using the indirect method of simulation games and also the Forum Theatre method, and we would like to develop such a game which not only enhance the knowledge of young adults in the topic of abuse, but to get them thinking about this topic and to stop them to be an abuser, and also to give them some good tools on how to handle these situations in their everyday lives.

After the kick-off meeting (Budapest, December 2018) the consortium members worked hard on finalising the already existing characters and situations of the game, and the game was tested by young adults and experts in Denmark, Portugal, France, Bulgaria and Romania.

Then, the consortium members met again during the second transnational partner meetings which was organised in the Copenhagen City Youth School in Denmark, on 11 March 2019. All the partner organisations were present in the meeting which had more aims:

• to get an overview and a speak about the activities and results so far in the project;
• to point out the tasks, the responsible parties and deadlines of the next project phase;
• to discuss about new ideas and questions on how to develop further the game;
• to get more familiar with the administrative and financial questions of the project.

Thanks to the meeting and to our joint thinking, many good ideas came up regarding the gamification, and the participants also shared some good practices and useful methods with each other. All in all, the meeting was very useful and met all of its goals. The next transnational partner meeting will be organised in Chambéry, France on 12-13 June 2019. In the meantime, the consortium members continue to work on the already existing characters and situations, and also create some new characters and situations as part of the development process of our simulation game. Work in process…

Date: 26-03-2019

PREVENT project came to life

The creative work in the Prevent Bullying and Abuse (PREVENT) project has been started with the kick-off meeting on 2-4 December 2018, in Budapest. During the meeting, the consortium of 7 partner organisations from 6 nations, led by FSZK Non-profit Ltd., got familiar with the project rules and plans, and also tested the “zero” version of the to-be-made simulation game.

Bullying is a very common, serious and growing problem throughout the world and Europe. The main objective of the project is to develop educators’ competencies in their everyday work for preventing young adults of different kind of bullying, from mockery to abuse. A comprehensive tool system will be developed in the project for that which includes:

• a simulation board game mostly for young adults;
• a Guidelines on how to work with young adults’ experiences gained from the simulation game;
• a Forum theatre methodology also working with their experiences gained from the game.

One objective of the game is to sensitize and inform young adults about the different ways of bullying, and gives them all the necessary knowledge and practices to recognize, avoid and/or handle abuse in the best possible way.  Another important objective of the project is to promote and support the social inclusion of such vulnerable groups who already have fewer opportunities and so have bigger chance becoming victims of bullying. The simulation game supports to emphasize our common responsibility to avoid bullying situations. The third objective of the project empowering with the necessary knowledge and practices to young adults (including young adults from different types of vulnerable groups) to recognize, avoid and/or handle such situations in the best possible way.

The implementation of the project started on 1 September 2018 and will end on 30 April 2021. The consortium members first met on 2-4 December 2018 in Budapest, and they took their first steps together towards their joint aim: to create a useful tool for young adults to prevent and/or avoid abuse.

As the very first step on this route, FSZK presented the “zero version” of the simulation game to the partners and organised a test for them. Then, they shared their first impressions and feedbacks on the game so the professional discussion has already been started. To be more attuned to the topic of abuse, the participants of the meeting watched a Hungarian film together (Hope you’ll die next time :)). After the film watching, also the director of the film joined to the project team and had an exciting conversation with them not only about the film, but also about the topic of abuse.

All in all, the kick-off meeting has successfully reached its aim as each participants said goodbye at the end of the meeting sharing the same commitment, dedication and motivation on the project, also agreed and got familiar with their tasks and responsibilities. Now the next important step in the project is the organisation and implementation of the first test events. After the kick-off meeting, the consortium made the ‘first test version’ of the simulation game building in also the suggestions of the partners, that they can use during the first test events in Denmark, France, Portugal, Bulgaria and Romania with the inclusion of young adults and experts from their countries.

Date: 05-02-2019