Association for the second chance education

From Vision - Multimedia Education

    AE2O (Associação para a Educação de Segunda Oportunidade) is a non profitable private association, whose general objective is to promote second chance education, addressing especially young people with less opportunities, low school and professional qualifications and thus, being at the risk of social exclusion. The main activity of the organisation is to run in Matosinhos, north of Portugal, a Second Chance School, in the scope of the European Second Chance Schools network (E2C-Europe). Escola de Segunda Oportunidade (Second Chance School) offers to the young people a new chance of quality training suitable to their needs and develops a set of learning activities, exchange of practices and sharing the ideas. One of the main aims of the school is to provide involved young people with the intercultural experiances. The work of AE2O is based on the idea, that anyone who is given the possibility to meet various cultures in a stimulating environment (like it happens during the international project) experiences a profound change, opens the mind and alternates perspectives.For several years AE2O has been organising and participating in many international projects (youth exchanges, seminars, training courses, networking activities).
    Every year thousands of young people leaves schools without having obtained the minimum qualifications essential to access a job or enter into further training courses and, most often without having basic social skills to enable them to appropriate social and occupational integration. The project of second chance education offers these youngsters an alternative learning experience, based in strongly motivating environment,supporting development of various competences both social and vocational,sourceing from the individual needs, desires and capabilities. The asociation developes training programs that combine the quality of acquisition of necessary skills with practical training in the context of work and society.This is where young people are being accompanied in discovery of their interests and building their life projects. The project is based on a shared social responsibility among local authorities, utilities, associations and businesses in a broader policy of urban regeneration and social reintegration. The second chance education is not only aimed at young school dropouts but it is rather a versatile project, able to perform various functions and to address different audiences. It functions in a conjunction with the systems of formal education and training, becoming a new measure of public policy at the service of education and training and a new way to tackle problems of qualification and social integration of young people.