ISPAW is a Grundtvig Learning Partnership whose aim is to transfer competences as well as to exchange professional methods helping social structures to welcome and to accompany homeless persons.

The targets are associations or institutions which accommodate and coach youth suffering from family breakdown, on the way to marginalization and without a real home. The partnership gathers partners from France, Italy, Latvia,  Romania and Poland.
The coordinator is a French association, SAUVEGARDE 56- SOS Accueil - CHRS Mosaïk (Lorient, Brittany, France). Other partner are Radar B (France), Centre for European Studies and Initiatives (Palermo, Sicily, Italy), ASSOCIATION FOR EDUCATION AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT (Calarasi, Romania), Association Positive Mind (Tukums, Latvia), DANMAR COMPUTERS (Rzeszow, Poland).

As a marginal phenomenon in Europe during the 90's, the wandering and travelling of homeless persons has been diversified. More and more teenagers and young adults are living a marginal life, most of them claiming it as their own choice. To bear the unbearable, it is probably better to claim you are barely responsible for your own fate even if it illusory. Nevertheless this kind of statement is generally a common way to avoid reality. They are also suffering from early school leaving and they are consituting a heterogeneous population. It is difficult to classify them as they are part-time offenders, part-time workers, part-time drugs addicts.

At the European level there were many changes during the last twenty years. The FEANTSA (European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless) has achieved a European study funded by the EU  with the participation of 16 European countries, in the framework of the European strategy for social inclusion. It is obvious that unemployment and homelessness are deeply linked. 2 elements seem important, first, most of homeless people have multiple problems and so need to be accompanied under a holistic approach, second, there is a huge lack of coordination and cooperation between the structures concerned to be efficient in providing suitable services to the targets.

Video prepared by project coordinator.