BEYOND THE FRONTIERS

The Goccia Project is twinned, as we have mentioned, with four other centres: the "Centre Coordonné de l'enfance" in Charleroi in the south of Belgium, the "O.O.S.C.F." (Out of School Care Federation) in Inverness, capital of the Highlands in Scotland, and in France the "ELIXIR" centre working in the Gap area of the Hautes-Alpes region and in the Marseilles area (Bouche du Rhone) and the Associazione Zen Insieme in Palermo. The main aims of these centres are the same as those of the Goccia; extending crèche facilities and improving the quality.
The first meeting with our partners was at the Conference when our project was presented to the public on 21st and 22nd June 1998. Subsequent meetings were held in the countries which we visited.
During the first gathering held at the Goccia Associazione's premises our aim was to carry out animation activities which could represent a meeting also from a dynamic, educational and relational point of view. The basic idea was to experiment in order to reflect together and that these reflections would lead to further experimentation. Symbolically the work was to follow the phases of the "cycle of contact", which was the theoretical model for our project. So the game regarding objects (pre-contact) told us that we were there, in that context, but still concentrating on ourselves, on how we introduced ourselves. The next game with a balloon (contact) was aimed at opening emotional and reflective doors, letting the meeting flow also by following the impulse of embarassment seeking ways out of the difficulty. Then the sculpture game (full contact); by handling the clay the concept of "I am here" was strengthened in relation to a context which had to be kept in mind (not only my sculpture, but my part in the group sculpture). The last part of the day was dedicated to group discussion; this represented the final phase in the cycle of contact, that is post-contact. In this phase the different nature of the centres in the three partner countries was discussed together with the respective projects and the aims to be reached.
The three other European areas are, like ours, defined by the European Community as under-developed areas.
Charleroi is a town of 20,000 inhabitants, one quarter of which is less than 20 years old and one quarter of which is more than 60 years old. It is a poor town because of the closing of the coal mines. The only jobs available are in the hospitals because of the many illnesses miners suffer from as a result of their work underground, in old people's homes and in the retail trade thanks to the large strores located near the border with France. Women with little schooling behind them are employed in these sectors with widely varying working hours. The centre was set up thanks to the trade union SETca with the aim of offering these women the service they needed in order to be able to carry out their work serenely.
The centre has been in existence for two years; it coordinates different centres which look after children from 0 to 3 years and other centres called "garderie" for children aged 6 to 16 in out-of-school hours (two hours before the beginning of the lessons and one hour after). In these out-of-school hours the hildren do their homework under guidance and take part in recreational activities. There was, therefore, the need for a professional person to organize the activities in these hours. Thanks to their Now project this new figure has been created. He/she is not just a teacher or "animateur" but a combination of the two with the job of proposing gamelike activities with valid, useful educational objectives aimed at the child's development. School premises are used:gyms, canteens and recreational rooms. The centre has always been concerned with the development and organisation of new ideas and has recently offered recreational activities in poor areas. The aim is to create meeting places where children live, to teach them to love their own area, to get to know it and appreciate it. The main idea is to make adolescent citizen aware of his own rights and duties by getting him involved in specially organised games and recreational activities.
It was particularly interesting for our association to visit and observe the crèches for children of 0 to 3 years. In answer to the demands of a community in which families are at work, as we have said, for very long hours, the crèches stay open from 5 in the morning to 10 at night, even if no child is allowed to stay there longer than 10 hours. Each crèche organises its activities according to pedagogical guidelines based not only on the phase of development of the child, but also on the social, economic and cultural background of the child. The present organisation started with experimental work which began in 1971 in the University crèche. A young psychologist was in charge of the organisation of this crèche in its early days, and she drew attention to the need for a well defined educational project for the crèche. That was a great innovation for that period! The theoretical model was that of Loczj, integrated with other theories. The essential pedagogical principles were the following:
a) to respect each child's rhythm;
b) to encourage the child's independence by means of the definition of spaces and a loving relationship;
c) to encourage the development of relationships between the children.
Another important aspect of the work of the crèche is teamwork: all the staff contribute in all the work with the children, according to their specific professional abilities and skills, helping to recognise needs and to supply answers. This methodology involves continuing in-service training for all the team at work. Permanent training, see not as arid learning of facts but as "reflection, transformation, reflection" is considered indispensable. At weekly meetings the whole team discusses the dynamics and the contents of their work. A sort of permanent evaluation technique is used which includes time for observation and relfection. Those who work in the crèche have a motto: "One hour's meeting is not time added to work, but time gained in future work in order to produce quality and serenity." The dynamic nature of each pedagogical project is an essential characteristic. Problems become questions to which they try to give answers which are suitable at that moment but not final. It is important to develop the capacity to face up to and deal with difficulties and contradictions each time they come up. Elasticity and flexibility are part of each project; they are indispensable for the understanding of a child, just as the psychologists present in each team maintain.
Two strong forces have been at the base of the 25 year history of these crèches in Belgium: they are the will and the desire on the part of women to have crèches which respond to family needs, and the political will which has taken up these examples, making available organisational and economic resources and professional skills.

Inverness is the capital of the Highlands, an area as big as Belgium, but with a very low population density: 370,000 inhabitants, 9 per sq.km. The villages are a long way from each other and it is difficult for people to meet up.
The traditional activities of fishing and manufacturing are disappearing. The most important sector is tourism in which 87% of all the women work for very low wages. Apart from being a form of self-fulfilment, a woman's work is necessary to help a family to make ends meet.
The provision of services for small children is indispensable so that the women may work serenely and so that the children who live in very isolated places may meet. These services receive very little financial support from the local communities. They do, however, receive financing from the companies who are obliged to do something for the society in which they work. At the moment there ae three types of services for small children: one is a service of childminders at home, another service is offered for four hours a week and another looks after children in out-of-school hours and during school holidays.
It is very difficult for people working in the services in these isolated villages to meet. E-mail is essential for the relaying of information without the added costs of a main centre for the service. Keeping up-to-date is also extremely difficult as there are only two training centres in the Highlands- one in Inverness and one in Aberdeen. For these reasons the Scottish project aims at gathering together the requests for training and organising courses on the spot, so that everyone may have at least a minimum level of professional competence. Up to today, in act, no qualification is necessary to work in these sector, being registered with the Department of Social Services is sufficient.
During our visit we noticed that in their work the teachers were aware of the children's needs, capable of welcoming them, guiding them and supporting them, even if, on the contrary from what we had noticed in Belgium, no-one talked about an educational pattern or a theoretical model.
We would like to give one example: one of the training courses most requested by people working in this sector concerned the basic notions of First Aid. Such a course enabled them to face up to an emergency situation, especially as the nearest hospital was 60 km away.
Apart from the Out of School Care Federation centres in the different villages, we visited a nursery school in Inverness for children from 18 months to 5 years. Although they had only one large room, the teachers had created four corners; the creative corner, the corner for home activities, the soft corner and the handicrafts corner. In this way the children were able to undertake different activities according to their age and to what they liked doing.
The atmosphere was serene and harmonious and made us reflect on the fact that, although it is true that structures are important, it is equally true that office organisation, seriousness and a professional attitude to work can fill in the gap left by the lack of official structures.

Marseilles is a city of 1.110,000 inhabitants with 19% unemployment, the highest in France.
Its economy based once, thanks, to the port, on trade, with the French colonies in Africa, is now in serious difficulty. European unity has, in fact, meant that trade has been organised in a different way. The problem is made worse by the very high number of African immigrants who live in this city occupying whole areas which fall into a very bad state of decay. The immigrants continue to live according to their own cultural traditions. Living together is neither an easy nor a peaceful matter. However, much work has been done and continues to be done everywhere to bring about integration, and this includes the provision of crèches. During our stay in Marseilles we visited four such centres for small children: two in Marseilles and two in Hautes-Alpes, each one was organised to meet the needs of the area in which it was situated.
The centres for small children, which are divided into "crèches" and "Halte-garderie" (centres for children who do not attend regularly or who come out-of-school hours, are associative structures run officially and financed by a national organisation called A.C.E.P.P. (Association des collectifs enfants-parents-professionnels) .
The stimulus to create this service comes first from the families who form an association, taken on a coordinator who mediates with the authorities (the Town Council, in particular) after having certified that a real need exists and after having carried out a feasibility study.
The town authories are not obliged by any law to take the request into consideration; it is up to the parents to stand up for their rights. But the French, and history is witness to this, know how to make their presence felt. In this connection it is useful to remember an expression the French use "If the politicians do not do their best to guarantee the necessary services, they know very well that we will not vote for them again!"
If the town authorities recognise the need for the service, they will invest only one third of the total expenditure, which can take the form of providing premises, while one third will be the responsibility of the C.A.F. and one third will be paid by the users.
The C.A.F. (Family Allowances Fund) has been dedicating part of its income to services for very small children since 1968. Only children of working parents can go to the crèches, while the children of women who do not work can attend the "Halte-Garderies" only now and again. In this way, women who do not work, and this is not a choice on their part, are at a double disadvantage, because their right to leave their child in a crèche and be able to enter the world of work more easily is not recognised.
By law only 50% of the staff have a professional qualification (two years after the equivalent of 'A' levels) and these include the head of the crèche. The rest of the staff do not need to have a specific qualificatikon, since they have the role of helpers. Almost 50% of the staff working for ther associations have state-aided contracts. Babysitters working at home are also state-aided and many families opt for this solution.
Health and educational checks are carred out by a health officer according to certain parameters when the centre opens and while it is working.
The educational project does not follow any particular theoretical model, but takes into consideration a child's rhythms aiming at healthy psychophysical development, according to a "Charter" of rights, the most important of which are the following:
a) to develop the child's awareness;
b) to fit the child gradually into the crèches, to ensure a careful pschyological development of the separation factors;
c) to welcome, accept and support the child;
d) to encourage the healthy development of his sense of independence;
e) to support and encourage his natural curiosity and thus prepare him for learning;
f) to recognise that the parent is the child's first teacher;
g) to guarantee parents' presence at the crèche;
h) to encourage meetings, exchange of information and solidarity betwen parents;
i) to recognise that parents have a right to participate in the running and decisions of the crèche.

The Associazione Zen Insieme started in 1988 as a voluntary association; the founder members were social workers and people living in the Zen area of Palermo. The aim of the Association is to experiment new ways in the field of crime prevention and the fight against the Mafia mentality and, at the same time, to unify those working in the Zen area.
In the early areas the work was aimed at boys and girls attending the Middle School, in particular in the 3rd and last year. The aim was to help them, by means of professional careers advice, to plan a future for themselves. This experience helped workers to understand the problems of young people living in the Zen area on the very edge of Palermo and badly connected to the city. It is an area in an extreme state of decay, with a high percentage of squatting especially in the most recent part called Zen 2.
In 1995 Zen Insieme decided to open a social centre and asked IACP for the use of one of the few premises in Zen 2 still not lived in. The premises were restructured as a result of a course for bricklayers for boys aged 15 to 18. The social centre is inside the courtyard of one of the buildings (called "islands") inhabited by 250 families. These buildings are closed microstructures like "self-made ghettos" and the same can be said for the whole area.
The inadequate services, starting from state schools themselves, make life "unlivable" and hopeless for the inhabitants. The Associazione Zen Insieme has not supplied assistance in the traditional sense of the word, but has offered services and group activities to avoid the desire on the part of adolescents to meet together being met by criminal groups, and to bring the children, young people and mothers in the area out of a dangerous situation of isolation. Services for small children are inadequate; in Zen 2 where there are 2,000 children under the age of five, there are only 400 places in nursery schools and 35 in crèches. The idea of prevention has led the Association to present two training projects to the European union: one for young people called Youthstart, and one for women called NOW. The latter includes two training courses (for teachers and assistants working with very small children) and the setting up and monitoring of a cooperative aimed at the management and organisation of centres for small children. The members of the Associazione say that to be able to entrust the management of a nursery school to the women living in the Zen would mean giving something precious to the children and work to the mothers. It would mean enabling the inhabitants of the Zen to become normal citizens with rights and duties just as other people.
The 800 hour training course for 15 teachers and 15 assistants has now ended and those on the course have been able to do a week's work experience at the "Centre Coordonné de l'enfance" in Charleroi, Belgium. After the training course the Cooperativa Retablo organised for them a business training course and the Laboratorio Zen Insieme organised supporting cultural activities in the use of computers and in English. As regards the premises to be used as a nursery school, a great amount of work has been carried out thanks to funds recovered from the mafia, but further financial help is necessary to finish the work. We hope for our partners in Palermo that the authorities will lend a sympathetic ear and will act so that the work carried out by the Associazione Zen Insieme will not be in vain. We hope that their dream may come true, that the area will be freed of the mafia, that the mentality will change and that a new generation of citizens will be formed, men and women who are free, and who will be the true protagonists responsabile for their own future.

After comparing all these different structures, it is clear that services dedicated to small children are essential and that to develop they need integrated financial support (public and private). It is clear, too, that the educational and pedagogical quality of the services is not an option but a pre-requisite, the key to the whole service, because it is the child's and the parents' right: It is a resource for the community and represents a means of avoiding social ills. It is obvious that quality must not remain just a word but must be measured and evaluated. There must be a competent authority responsible for control.
In the situation in which we operate, because of the lack of legislation regarding crèches, the question of educational and pedagogical planning and of control has not yet been considered. The comparison with projects run by our partners has shown us that this is essential in an advanced form of society. For the Goccia it has confirmed our opinion that it is necessary to try out an educational model and present it to the local authorities, it has also confirmed our opinion that it is necessary to request the government to update legislation on this matter. By financing these projects the European Community obliges us to exchange our findings and information on our activities, in order to make more uniform actitivies carried out in different geographicval areas. This leads to the building up of a Europe based on its peoples and its work and prepares the ground for the setting up of institutions capable of representing it. European monetary union, in fact, is not sufficient to make us into one great state, if we do not have culture and customs in common.

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