The project entitled Sharing and Adapting the Complex Sensitization Program in the Central European Region (KÉP) was created in cooperation with the Hand in Hand Foundation and its partners, the Comenius Pedagogical Institute from Slovakia and the Key Association of Social Educators from Romania. The projeect aims to strengthen the social acceptance of people with disabilities. Founded by Erasmus+, the project aims to lay down the foundations for social acceptance of disability in kindergartens and primary schools, at professional and community level. In accordance with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the mission of all three organizations, complex societal programs are needed to bring the principles and policies to the attention of smaller professional and local communities.

The complex sensitization program on which the KÉP project is based on has been developed by the Hand in Hand Foundation for over ten years. Since 2012 they organized a total of 28 trainings, which were attended by nearly 400 teachers. During the trainings, the same number of disability weeks were implemented with the participation of more than 10,000 children. In addition 2,500 pre-school and school children met the disability durint sport days in an experiential and inclusive way.

In the present project, our goal was to successfully extend the nearly three decades of social awareness and attitude-forming work of the Hand in Hand Foundation to the international environment. The professional and auxiliary materials collected in the project in previous years were transformed into a unified material by the partners, and the staff of the Key Association and the Comenius Pedagogical Institute adapted them to the Central European region, focusing on local characteristics.

This is how the KÉP project is supporting the social model of disability, approaching the problems and difficulties related to disability in society in an innovative way and providing a complex response to them.

In addition to knowledge transfer, the central organizing power of the project is empowerment, which results in educators gaining up-to-date, usable and transferable knowledge on disability and social acceptance. We consider it important that the KÉP approach reaches as many children, parents and teachers as possible.

This is supported by the professional materials produced in the framework of the project: one training topic per country, a collection of exercises and tasks for organisin the disability weeks, etc. The published and freely usable professional materials ensure that our program is able to reach new professionals, children and communities, thus effectively contributing to a more inclusive educational culture and society.