Farsi Comunità Educanti (Fa.C.E.). A Case Study for Inclusion, Participation and Quality Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) Services

Fa.C.E. Farsi Comunità Educanti (from here on Fa.C.E.), a 3-years project (2018–21) lead by Reggio Children Foundation and financed by social enterprise Con I Bambini, has «increasing access to ECEC services, especially for disadvantaged families» as core objective. Innovative to this project is not the goal, but the approach: doing it through the creation of educating communities, both on a local and national level. This article will analyse the project strategies also in the light of the Successful Educational Actions for inclusion and social cohesion. (Flecha, 2014). In a year long process, built on dialogic approach, national (AMREF, Gruppo Nazionale Nidi Infanzia) and local (Palermo, Naples, Teramo, Reggio Emilia) project partners co-designed the pilot actions. Through a collective reflexive dialogue, they investigated the reasons for lack of access to quality educational services, mapped local realities, sketched actions combining both. (Malaguzzi in Cagliari et al., 2016) This community has become a safe space where new and generative ideas could take form. (Rinaldi, 2006). This structure allows the project to proceed, through the stops and goes due to covid19 emergency. Taking the lead from this ecological approach, stakeholders were involved in actions design, gaining ownership of them. Everywhere parents, with or without access to ECEC, widely expressed the desire to spend quality time with their children engaging in educational activities. This is action 1: children and parents learning, playing, and understanding together, within a community. This common reflexive space for families has a positive effect on parental involvement, and on connecting vulnerable families with ECEC and with a larger parental community. (Del Boca, 2020) Action 2 varies. In Palermo it takes the form of conversations on parenthood between experts (educators, doctors) and parents. In Teramo it has involved school, municipality, and associations in opening a new toddler center, granting quality educational service to families in the middle of the pandemic. Preliminary results of the project, emerging from impact evaluation and qualitative analysis, include: the creation of local and national networks providing integrated health, social and educational services to families, through different tools, including an online space; the sharing of strategies and visions among actors of different areas of the country highlighting new areas of common efforts; growing understanding among the families involved of the role of ECEC services and the opportunities they provide for children; a national conference to foster results dissemination.