A program carried out by a group of teachers of the University of Granada, Department of Pedagogy, works on integration through road education of groups of immigrants and citizens with high risks of suffering social exclusion, at the time as their possibilities of finding a job improve. The project is the result of the collaboration between the Centro de Iniciativas de Cooperación al Desarrollo (CICODE) and the research group “Social and Cultural Education” of the UGR with the Adult Centre “El Doncel”, intends to prepare these groups to get the driving licence.
With a budget of 2,826 euros financed by the CICODE of the University of Granada, the program pursues to respond to a social need of Granada: the social integration of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged groups with highest risk of suffering uprooting y marginalization. Through road education, the persons in charge of the project offer to the participants the opportunity of developing values, habits and attitudes that allow them to respond appropriately as citizens in the different traffic situations as pedestrians, passengers or drivers, preparing them to obtain the driving licence. Apart from road education, the project transcends its specific objectives to tackle with questions connected with environment, health and tolerance, collaborating on the civic education of the participants. It allows the educative and socio-labour adaptation of these groups, as they are essential aspects on the complex integration process, where so determinant variables such as labour, economic, cultural, personal y social ones come into play.
Another objective of the project “Road education for immigrants and groups with risk of exclusion as an element of social and cultural integration” is to offer immigrants and adults with difficulty in reading and writing the possibility of getting the driving licence. This initiative, developed in the centre “El Doncel” with 140 participants of different nationalities, are mostly illiterate Spanish, Senegalese, Moroccans, Ukrainians and Russians.
Immigrants, a growing group
The program is specially aimed at the immigrants, a growing population sector and which, thanks to integrationist initiatives like this, are starting to improve their social adaptation by having access to education, work and the cultural reality of the country. Between December of 1996 and March 2002, it was registered a number of foreigners higher than that of which were up till then in Spain. Foreigners are 3% Spanish population, and this number amounts to 4% if we include those who have become naturalized and those who still are registered illegally. At first, foreign labour was very concentrated on activities such as housework, farming, construction, hotel trade and commerce. However, most of the new registered do not work in farming or housework; besides, in the province of Granada many of them are “self-employed”.
Reference: Prof. Miguel Beas Miranda. Supervisor of the project. Department of Pedagogy.
Phone number: 958 242325 / 958 243761.
E-mail: mbeas@platon.ugr.es