SMIIM: Reducing social isolation through intercultural knowledge

Sep 25, 2018News

How to reduce social isolation and favour intercultural knowledge?

How to help public services to overcome linguistic barriers in communicating with the foreigners?

The second meeting of SMIIM – Skill to maximise Inclusion through interpreting and Mediation project was held on the 10th and 11th of September 2018 in Berlin (Germany). SMIIM is the follow-up project of the successful Language Interpreter Training as a Stepping Stone to Work which was implemented few years ago by the same consortium.

During the meeting in Berlin, the partners discussed the innovative on-line platform that will train cultural mediators and interpreters of the future, combined with a series of face-to-face lessons. After the piloting phase of the digital platform that will begin in October 2018 during a training in Palermo, in January 2019 the selection to train 10 mediators will begin in each country.

The project aims to make a meaningful contribution to reducing social isolation, gaps in intercultural knowledge of the migrant / refugee and the host country public services and language communication barriers.

The project plans the following activities:

  • Local events: the project foresees two partner events to promote their activities through invitations to events, presentations to other networking events of local communities;
  • Two training courses for staff and interpreters / cultural mediators to test the on-line platform.

All partners will test the methods presented during the training, modifying them and developing them according to the needs and constraints observed during the local pilot laboratories.

The project aims at obtaining the following results:

  • Implementation of a web portal to improve the educational offer for students in the field of cultural interpretation and mediation. This innovative product will enable students to practice speaking and pronunciation with their students in other partner countries;
  • Twelve promotional events (two per partner);
  • Creation of six innovative products including web portal, on-line educational material, video and voice repository and a manual for trainers;
  • Training for 60 students (10 for partners), to train 30 interpreters and 30 cultural mediators;
  • Training for 12 trainers / mediators (2 per partner) for a continuous professional development opportunity.

Next meeting with the partners will be in Palermo from 15 to 19 October 2018 on the occasion of the “Train the trainers” event.

SMIIM partners are:

For further information please contact Dario Ferrante dario.ferrante@danilodolci.org