The European Office of the Hospitaller Order in Brussels – Hospitality Europe – is delighted to learn from the communication issued by the Agency responsible for the European Union’s “Erasmus+” programme that it will finance the latest European project proposal recently submitted by the Hospitality Europe office, for the education and sociocultural inclusion of people with disabilities using new the latest telecommunications technologies.

The new project to be financed is entitled “Learning Through Innovative Technologies Boosting Equality” – LET IT BE) and will begin in the coming months, and be completed by the summer of 2020. It intends to continue and step up the work already done with the previous DESKTOP project in which several centres caring for people with disabilities belonging to the Order and the Sisters Hospitallers in Europe took part, and which created a teaching app for people with intellectual disabilities using tablets and smartphones. This latest project sets out to enhance the contents and the interactivity of the mobile app and to test devices to enable people with physical disabilities and the hearing-impaired to use the programme. The centres taking part will be the same ones that participated in the previous project. with the addition of the San José Institute Foundation in Madrid. Events will be held nationally and throughout Europe to disseminate the results of the project and also to involve other care and educational facilities for people with disabilities in the European Provinces of the Hospitaller Order.

The project will be coordinated by the Juan Ciudad Foundation in Madrid and will be supported with a European grant of over 277,000 euro. It will focus not only on digital teaching aids but in particular on the rights of people with disabilities, with the drafting of a European protocol to promote them and foster respect for them in the fields of education and social care.