Inclusive nurseries for quality early childhood development

What is the programme about?

The Municipality of Józsefváros launched a complex kindergarten development project, in which our foundation and the Rosa Parks Foundation were invited as partners. We have successfully applied to the European Commission for the project and the consortium has been awarded a grant of 267 017 EUR (approx. 97 million HUF), to which each of the three organisations will contribute 20 % of their own funds, in proportion to their respective grants. In recent years, a large number of young people, including families with young children, have moved to the
Józsefváros. However, we see that many people do not use the services here, they go to the doctor elsewhere, they take their children to school and kindergarten in other districts.

Our aim in the project entitled "Inclusive kindergartens for quality early childhood development" is to make the 12 kindergartens in Yózsefváros attractive to parents who currently send their children to kindergarten outside the district; to reflect the diversity that is typical of the district, the kindergarten area, and to do this, each kindergarten - while preserving its own programme and building on its strengths - should develop and implement its own institutional development programme. We would also like to ensure that kindergartens offer attractive and high-quality programmes and services to the inhabitants of the district, so that every family in the 8th district wants to send their child to a local kindergarten.

What do we do during the programme?

• The Partners Hungary Foundation's task is to ensure that both the district and institutional strategic planning and its implementation are carried out with the involvement of all stakeholders, and that kindergartens renew their methodological tools and offer new services in line with the expectations of the owners, modern educational principles and parents.
  We want to achieve this by professionals working together with each other, with parents, with
  with children, while learning from each other, sharing experiences, empowering, encouraging
  each other in introducing change.
• Strategic planning with stakeholders to develop a long, medium and short term plan that will help the maintainer and the institutions to work and develop in a consistent way and in line with common goals, and to continue the work started in the project.
• Methodological developments to prepare children for life in the 21st century, working closely with parents.
• Communication: promoting the kindergartens and the new services to residents and families in the district and strengthening the identity of the district.
• District boundary changes to optimise the use of kindergartens and to ensure that each kindergarten has a balanced mix of Roma, children with special educational needs and foreign children.
• In the framework of the project, we will develop a complex methodology and related tools, which will be tested in the project. This tool will then be available to all municipalities and other kindergarten operators who would like to make their kindergartens and the institutions they run inclusive in the same way.