The first quarter is up
The Soulbus project is well under way. During the past several months we have been active and below is a summary of our activities.
2013 started with partners putting forward the Soulbus application which was approved in August. The next several months were spent on brainstorming, analysing and putting good ideas on paper. These were then summarised into work packages and presented in December at the 1st kick off meeting held at Saxion University of Applied Science in Enschede, the Netherlands. The goal of Soulbus is to seek out and meet future challenges in multiculturalism.
A case study method was proposed by the Slovenian partners for gathering data. A questionnaire on multiculturalism was prepared with special attention given to several areas (mentioned in the case repository article). The completed questionnaire was circulated to all partners by the end of January. Interviews (based on the questionnaire) of mentors, teachers and students were carried out in February and served to record the experiences, views and expectations of the interviewees. These were then collected and summarised into national reports which were sent off to the College of Nursing Jesenice, responsible for preparing the case repository. The first mile was completed here.
During this time, all partners carried out activities of spreading the word about the project. Online articles confirming participation were published on the homepage of each partner. In-house meetings were held to inform colleagues about the project (aims, duration and benefits) as well as other activities to provide information to interested parties.
The Case Repository was finalised by College of Nursing Jesenice and provided to all partners in March. It served to provide insights and opinions on the direction which should be followed in designing the Multicultural Coaching Programme which represents the 2nd milestone of this project.
A 2nd kick-off meeting was held in April at the Tartu Health Care College in Tartu, Estonia. The partners prepared detailed schedules with expectations of each partner for the following months and discussed the Case Repository. The partners also discussed current project activities giving opinions on how to improve on them as well as agreeing on how to proceed:
- the design and platform for the multicultural coaching programme
- recruitment of teachers and mentors for the piloting of the Multicultural Coaching Programme
- agreeing on the next meeting to follow up on activities.