BOS

BOS Democratic School

BUSTA

The project focuses on the role of students in developing animal-assisted therapies and the great impact the children can have on the practices. 

BUSTA /Building  Skills through Training Animals/ will promote innovative and practical learning methods for students which have a real-world impact, by integrating animal therapy training. The project will aim at: 

  1. Empowering teachers to promote students’ talents through innovative pedagogy.
  2. Empowering teachers to promote students’ active real-world participation and inclusiveness through awareness building and psycho-affective connection.
  3. Empowering students’ capacity to develop curiosity, work with challenges and co-design creative solutions.
  4. Empowering students’ capacity to use digital tools and content to exchange practices with partner schools.

The project will develop 3 core elements:

  1.  A documentary video reflecting upon the research process conducted by students: awareness activities to understand the content and purpose of each animal training as well as to understand the different types of disabilities supported by each therapy; and actions to identify the training needs of each partner as well as transfer knowledge and experience.
  2. Impact & Reproductivity Report: assessment of the development of skills and analysis of the drivers and barriers to the up-scaling of this process
  3. Guidelines on how to integrate skill-building in schools through animal training, targeted to: schools, animal therapy associations and organizations for persons with disabilities​

The project gathers the following partners in order to reach its aims: 

To ensure the project runs smoothly and we collaborate with all partners our staff attended the kick-off meeting of the project. The 2 day meeting took place in Brussels hosted by the BOS and EASPD. 

In developing the first set of activities Dyadis organization has put BOS in contact with the host family of a dog in training, who were invited for several visits to the children from BOS at the school, and also for a 2 weeks immersion experience in one of the BOS families house for ongoing work, in order to learn about training the therapy dog.

Official number of the project: 2021-1-LT01-KA220-SCH-000034363 ‘This project is funded with the support of the European Commission. This publication reflects only the personal views of its author and the Commission cannot be held responsible for the use of the information contained therein.’