Reciprocal maieutic approach, digital skills and rural areas: Our Digital Village has started

Mar 20, 2023News

How to respond to the needs of rural contexts to ensure long-term transformation towards digitalization? By directly involving the people who live there to identify their needs: CSC Danilo Dolci proposes the reciprocal maieutic approach.

This was the main topic of the first meeting with the Our Digital Village partnership which took place in Athens on February 28th and March 1st, 2023, followed by training sessions on the reciprocal maieutic approach. During this first meeting, the imminent start of the activities that will see the partnership engaged in the rural areas of Italy, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, Romania, Austria and Poland with the creation of “digital communities” was discussed.

These digital communities will include:

  • Private and public educational and organizational institutions (schools, universities, youth centers, NGOs, associations) that will participate in maieutic workshops for identifying the needs of the rural community with teachers, technical staff and learners; will participate in the co-creation process of educational materials; and will participate with the teaching staff in the training on technological innovation.
  • Local Authorities (municipalities or similar) that will have the role of supporting the project activities by providing venues for the activities, recruiting participants and promoting the project results.
  • Policy makers in the field of education representing local, regional or national authorities who will participate in maieutic workshops for identifying the needs of the rural community and in international workshops for the promotion and mainstreaming of results.

Digital communities will be fundamental in this first project phase for carrying out maieutic workshops for school students, teachers and adult learners. The workshops will have the aim of identifying the needs of rural communities regarding the improvement of digital and transversal skills, needs that will be the starting point of the next phase: the co-creation of educational materials useful for the development of the aforementioned skills.

For this reason, during the meeting in Greece, the CSC trained the partners present on the reciprocal maieutic approach, on the conduct of maieutic workshops and on the story of Danilo Dolci during a “training for trainers” who will now be able to put into practice the knowledge acquired in their local contexts.

The results of the maieutic workshops in each country will then be enclosed in a scientific publication that will be promoted at European level and will be the starting point for the creation of an Activity Toolkit aimed at developing digital and transversal skills in rural areas.

OUR DIGITAL VILLAGE – CO-DESIGNED DIGITAL EDUCATION IN RURAL AREAS is a project financed by the Erasmus + program (Key Action 2: Forward-Looking Projects) and aims to promote a process of community self-analysis in rural areas through Reciprocal Maieutic Approach, to identify the needs of the rural contexts and co-create educational materials for the strengthening of digital and transversal skills.

Partners:

For further information contact Marta Galvano: marta.galvano@danilodolci.org