Training consultancy

The team coaching training program is a learning journey focused on the skills and knowledge needed to become an effective team coach. The program is designed for those who wish to develop the competencies required to lead, support, and enhance team performance within an organization.

• Foundations of Team Coaching
• Effective Communication and Team Coaching Techniques
• Team Coaching Process
• Team Analysis and Performance Assessment

The intercultural dimension manifests itself daily and has done so for many years, as in all countries around the world, when children and families with diverse origins and backgrounds, speaking different mother tongues, come together in educational services and early childhood education.

The new cultural interweaving concerns not only geographical origin but also choices and lifestyles. If everyone learns to avoid classificatory definitions of each other’s identity, this variety can be explored, understood, raises questions, and promotes dialogue and the discovery of different perspectives.

Cultural complexity and multilingualism are a “difficult wealth” that requires new skills and promotes forms of encounter and exchange between professionals and parents, among parents, among children. It stimulates knowledge of the world, opens horizons, poses new challenges to democratic life, and ensures the ability to adapt to changes.

1. Foundations of Intercultural Education
2. The context of educational services for ages 0-6
3. Intercultural strategies in educational services for ages 0-6
4. Methodologies and tools for intercultural education

Educational services for young children are the first environments where children encounter the differences of shared daily life. Here, parents compare their educational and childcare models, while educators welcome, mediate, and intertwine diverse expectations. In recent years, these services have increasingly welcomed parents and children who come from different backgrounds and have experienced migration. Consequently, traces and fragments of different cultures enter these services, posing questions, eliciting responses, and seeking to engage in dialogue with everyone’s history.

The training program offers an intercultural perspective on children’s literature, stemming from the awareness of the importance of reading, which is fundamental for the well-being and emotional and cognitive growth of young children.

Objectives

Specifically, the program will explore a selection of picture books designed for the 0-6 age group, reinterpreted from an intercultural perspective. Special attention will be given to proposals aimed at valuing the multilingualism of children and their families. Additionally, the training offers participants the opportunity to undertake a project work, which involves designing and/or implementing an intercultural narrative path based on the themes shared during the first two sessions.

Content

During the sessions, we will focus on the importance of recognizing, valuing, and maintaining original languages. Various types of picture books, reading tracks, and pathways with an intercultural approach will be analyzed. Participants will idealize and/or create a project work, starting from text analysis to the design of the pathway. Bibliographies and websites related to the discussed topics will also be provided.

The program will encourage the direct use of digital devices owned by the participants and practically usable in their services. It will also promote the use of easily accessible apps and software for processing images and sounds and for video editing, fostering autonomy in the creation of narrative and documentary products.

Objectives

Enable educators to promote the potential of digital tools and the ease of use of their devices to develop methodological and operational skills in creating narrative, educational, and documentary paths that enhance pedagogical work in four dimensions:

• In teams, facilitating collaboration among colleagues, planning, and evaluation
• With children, expanding the possibilities for intervention and activity management
• For families, promoting participatory and shared documentation of pedagogical development
• For institutions, other services, and organizations working with children, to highlight the work done and stimulate constant discussion on pedagogical practices

Content

• What is digital storytelling and how to develop it from a pedagogical perspective for the 0-6 age group
• Using digital tools narratively to facilitate team collaboration
• Working with children: digital tools as an operational “integrating background”
• Documenting through shareable formats and styles
• Narrating work with children in a social marketing logic, enhancing 0-6 services
• Evaluating activities carried out based on the course and modelling usage in services

Service design is an emerging field that helps—through tangible and intangible tools—enhance user experiences to improve service performance. It is a user-centred design approach characterized by interdisciplinarity and combines skills ranging from design to management and process engineering.

The goal is to build new service models that are inclusive, intercultural, and capable of creating new social, cultural, and economic value. The program will delve into the theoretical approach of service design, the construction of design and co-design processes, and the experimentation with various service design tools.

In this direction, the aim is to impart knowledge of 9 typical service design tools and a design framework that makes them easily usable in everyday contexts.

Objectives

• To develop knowledge related to the service design approach.
• To introduce the main principles of service design applied to the design of public services.
• To experiment with some service design tools.
• To define a design process inspired by service design.

Content
Each day, participants will be provided with knowledge related to service design, experiment with tools in small groups, and analyse the process and outcomes of the work done. In this context, the use of the main online visualization kits will also be presented.

The theme of human resources plays an increasingly important and strategic role for central and local public administrations, both due to the dynamism characterizing the current world of work and the continuous evolution of the regulatory framework. This inevitably leads to considering personnel as a fundamental asset for improving efficiency levels and the quality of services to citizens.

1. Project Cycle Management: Problem Analysis
2. Project Cycle Management: The Logical Framework
3. Project Cycle Management: EuropeAid and Social Impact Assessment
4. Project Cycle Management: Expenditure Monitoring

Objectives
The project aims to achieve strategic and concrete results that promote the development of the institutional capacity of administrations in the Lombardy Region. This is accomplished through strengthening the skills of employees, both in the administrative management of human resources and among the components of public administration engaged in social services, personal services, and/or within welfare structures.

Content
In relation to this theme, it is strategic to initiate paths of local welfare development, focusing on enhancing the skills of municipal staff to ensure greater effectiveness in the design and evaluation of services, as well as to develop networks. This is done in a logic of constructing local welfare capable of addressing challenges arising from an objective need to:

• Address an increasingly complex, diversified, and demanding demand with expectations of continuous improvement in the quality-of-service delivery and the methods of defining and providing services.
• Carefully consider the significance and role of public and private entities, particularly the third sector, which intervene to reconfigure local welfare, effectively modifying the context in which municipal administrations operate.

The reform of the Third Sector and the evolution of local welfare are increasingly pushing administrations to interpret their role differently, positioning themselves as entities that engage with the third sector to construct a local welfare system better equipped to address community issues.

In this direction, the Third Sector Code offers new and important opportunities with the revision of the institutes of Co-programming and Co-design.

In these years of institutional effervescence and innovation, where various Local Administrations are attempting to carry out experiences of co-programming and co-design, it appears important to accompany this effort with procedural and methodological support.

1. The paradigm of Shared Administration. Procedures for co-programming and co-design.
2. Methodological insights and experiences of co-programming and co-design.
3. Towards a Shared Administration. Framing the institute of co-programming and co-design within the statutory, regulatory, and programming dimension of the Local Entity.

Objectives

In line with the Third Sector Reform and the approach promoting Shared Administration, it is fundamental to promote a system of knowledge and practices useful for implementing experiences of co-design and co-programming in the various territories of our region.

In particular, the program will promote:

• A reflection on Shared Administration and how the institutes of co-programming and co-design fit within it.
• Guidelines for the proper implementation of experiences of co-programming and co-design.
• Methodological indications to facilitate local experiences correctly.

Contents

The pathway is characterized by an orientation that aims at institutional innovation through the paradigm of Shared Governance. In this direction, a series of contextual and specific insights on co-programming and co-design will be presented.

Specific cases will be presented along the pathway, and practical workshop sessions will be conducted to facilitate discussions among participants.

Being emotionally intelligent means being self-aware and using one’s inner resources to constantly improve the quality of life, drawing the best lessons from every circumstance. It means being able to recognize the subtle and overt signs of daily life to assert oneself in the best way possible in a win-win or no-deal situation. We can define winning those experiences in which an environment is created where all participants derive significant benefits, feeling recognized and satisfied.

Feeling satisfied is important to maintain adequate motivation to act and to keep clear the goals to be achieved and the processes to be activated to reach desired milestones.

Objectives
The proposed pathway aims to achieve the following objectives:

• Acquire an understanding of what Emotional Intelligence is and how significant it is in relationships with oneself and others.
• Understand different types of interactions: how to transform win-lose situations into win-win or no-deal situations.
• Acquire an awareness of the value of words as a communicative power element.
• Use words consistently with non-verbal and paraverbal channels.
• Acquire tools to effectively manage both asymmetric and symmetric professional relationships.

Contents

– Words as a programming code
– Relationship: characteristics of an emotionally intelligent relationship applied to personal and professional worlds
– Effective communication and professional relationship management: communication axioms, filters, and how to use it.

Local authorities and public entities are not new to the topic of fundraising, as evidenced by the provisions of D.L. 83/2014. However, the period of health emergency caused by Covid-19 has seen a significant increase in local authorities and public organizations, such as hospitals, engaging in fundraising activities to support various initiatives, such as providing food packages to poor families, purchasing medical equipment, and delivering hygiene and health devices.

While on one hand, the pandemic emergency in 2020 has massively driven local authorities and public organizations to explore the possibility of sourcing funds in a widespread manner not necessarily tied to specific sectors, on the other hand, it has not promoted fundraising strategies that go beyond emergency situations and are based on necessary methodological principles to ensure effectiveness and efficiency. Therefore, it becomes strategic to systematize and capitalize on both old and recent opportunities offered to local authorities regarding fundraising, through the provision of methodological foundations for fundraising processes and community engagement.

To offer both method and promote a shared activation of the community regarding resource issues, COHESION FUNDRAISING is proposed, which configures fundraising as a strategy for cohesion and sustainability for local authorities, non-profits, and the entire community. It is a strategy of community holder engagement that, using fundraising as a catalyst, creates conditions for sharing objectives and strategies with the reference community. Fundraising becomes the starting point for teaming up with the local area, fostering collaboration oriented towards community cohesion.

1. The method of cohesion fundraising and community engagement
COMMUNITY TEAMWORK: Local authorities and the challenge of resource acquisition during and after the pandemic, current scenarios and future development, theoretical and methodological pillars of cohesion fundraising, main strategies and techniques for engaging citizens – people raising.
2. The method of cohesion fundraising and community engagement
BUSINESSES: From money requests to co-design – sharing needs with businesses; strategies, techniques, and channels for research and involvement; managing interactions with entrepreneurs; corporate social responsibility and corporate welfare.
3. Community holder engagement and community design
BEYOND COMMUNICATION: Communication as an interactive process aimed at identifying shared needs beyond individual needs. Community engagement as an opportunity for shared responsibility for sustainability. Hackathons as community engagement and resource collection strategies.
4. TECHNIQUES AND TOOLS FOR COHESION FUNDRAISING: Applying cohesion fundraising to fundraising tools dedicated to local and public entities. Fundraising tools and techniques and cohesion fundraising, such as crowdfunding platforms, leveraging tax deductions, highlighting “a good cause,” meetings with entrepreneurs – fiscal aspects and intersections (for local authorities) with the third sector reform.

Objectives
The pathway aims to develop knowledge and skills for cohesion fundraisers in roles operating or to be operating in local authorities in the field of resource acquisition and sustainability.

From the early years of life, girls and boys learn to recognize roles within the family and begin to understand the rules of social life: the process of acquiring roles – but also socially shared prejudices – is extremely early and settles in the first years of kindergarten and school.

With the start of school, children make new experiences, begin to build bonds with peers, and participate in social life.

During this process of growth, inevitably, information about gender roles is acquired, not only by observing the behaviours of adult reference figures but also through play, reading, and interaction with mass media.

Objectives

• Explore the processes of gender identity construction;
• Highlight the active and educational role, never neutral, of the educating adult or teacher in the construction and/or transmission of stereotypes;
• Highlight within the 0-6 age group the peculiarities and opportunities for continuity in working on gender stereotypes between nursery and kindergarten.

Contents
The focus will be on the valorisation of differences, from a theoretical perspective, in teaching activities, and in educational and relational relationships. Attention will be given to stereotypes present in play, reading, and advertising.

Objectives

• Provide design skills to participants, both for individual and collective design;
• Identify a design format that will facilitate the design process and allow alignment between objectives, actions, evaluation system, and indicators;
• Promote a culture of results evaluation within the scope of design.

Contents
The course is divided into eight training modules, each with a specific focus:

The course involves a mix of theoretical and practical moments. During the theoretical sessions, participants will be introduced to the concepts and techniques necessary for project design and evaluation. During the practical sessions, participants will work in groups on the design of an individual project and a collective project.

A functional design format will be defined throughout the course, and a database of tools and indicators for project evaluation will be built.

Module 1: Introduction to Design
Focuses on introducing design, defining the meaning of the term project and its life cycle. Basic concepts of project design and management will be explored, with particular attention to goal identification, analysis of success factors, and possible risks. The importance of alignment between objectives, actions, evaluation system, and indicators will also be discussed. The module will introduce the theory of change to provide elements related to impact-oriented design.

This module will provide a solid foundation for understanding the basic principles of project design and management. The topics covered include:

• Introduction to the Theory of Change;
• Definition of project and project life cycle;
• Basic concepts of project design and management;
• Identification of community objectives and needs;
• Analysis of project success factors and risks;
• Importance of alignment between objectives, actions, evaluation system, and indicators;
• Building the project budget;
• Introduction to the Logical Framework.

Module 2: Design of Individual Projects
This module will delve into the design of individual pathways, focusing on the identification of needs and project recipients. The importance of defining objectives and actions to be taken will be discussed, and the methods for constructing the operational plan will be defined. Monitoring and evaluation of project results will also be examined to ensure that objectives have been achieved and to assess project outcomes. This module will deepen the basic principles of individual project design.

The topics covered include:

• Identification of project needs and recipients;
• Importance of defining project objectives and actions to be taken;
• Construction of the project’s operational plan;
• Monitoring and evaluation of project effectiveness.

Module 3: Design of Group Projects
Methods of designing group work will be explored in this module. The topics covered include:

• Identification of group needs and requirements;
• Definition of project objectives and actions to be taken;
• Construction of the project’s operational plan;
• Monitoring and evaluation of the project.

Module 4: Definition of Expected Results
Different types of expected results will be defined in this module to highlight the differences between outputs and outcomes. The following concepts will be developed:

• Definition of outputs and outcomes;
• Identification of expected results and success indicators;
• Definition of actions to achieve expected results;
• Use of the Logical Framework.

Module 5: Project Implementation
This module will delve into the methods and tools necessary for project implementation and management. The topics covered include:

• Definition of the work team and responsibilities;
• Implementation of actions outlined in the work plan;
• Timeline and control systems;
• Risk management and potential challenges.

Module 7: Project Impact Evaluation
The Theory of Change and the concepts of outputs and outcomes will be revisited in this module to ensure understanding of the functional elements to develop an evaluation system. The topics covered include:

• Reflection on evaluation from a Theory of Change perspective;
• Construction of monitoring and evaluation indicators;
• Importance of data analysis and effective reporting.

Module 8: Identification of Evaluation Tools
This module will develop a series of tools based on the skills and experiences of practitioners to assess project outcomes. The topics covered include:

• Consideration of the relationship between objectives and expected results;
• Identification of specific indicators;
• Creation, through participant experience, of a database of tools for data collection;
• Reflection on data usage and interpretation.