Points of Connection is a project funded by the European Union’s Erasmus+ programme and led by Prisms Malta, in collaboration with the Portuguese Association Voz do Autista (Portugal), the Catalan Federation of Autism (Spain), Fundacja Imago (Poland), Autism Europe (Belgium), Psychosocial Organisation (Greece), and the Commission for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities – CRPD (Malta).
Each partner organisation will create a working group of young autistic people, aged between 18 and 25, who will take part in all phases of the project, with various actions planned from 2023 to March 2026.
Its objectives are:
Improve the quality of life of autistic young people, make public and private services more accessible, and find points of connection.
PROJECT PHASES:
• Research – creation of an interactive questionnaire based on the QoL (Quality of Life) measure to measure the quality of life of autistic young people in the countries taking part in the project, and data collection.
• Promoting more accessible services – each partner organisation will identify 5 services that are not accessible in their country and will offer autism training to the entities that provide these services in order to make them more accessible to the community, with a plan to achieve this.
• Points of connection – in this phase, groups of 16 young people (8 autistic and 8 neurotypical) will be created with the aim of finding connection points between young people and raising awareness among their peers.
Workshops will be held and multimedia content produced (videos and podcasts) which will be broadcast on various channels.
• Dissemination and visibility – communicating and publicising the results obtained throughout the project. Content will be created and published on the project website (under construction) and on social media, about the actions that have been carried out and to raise awareness of autism and accessibility.
If you would like to find out more about this project, send an e-mail to: projetos@vozdoautista.pt
Federació Catalana d’Autisme
Autism-Europe
Commission for the Rights of Persons with Disability – CRPD
Fundacja Imago
Ploes – Psychosocial Organization
As part of the Erasmus+ ‘Points of Connection’ project, each partner organisation meets every month with a group of young autistic people from their country, who will help us throughout the project to improve the quality of life of autistic people and make services and places more accessible.
The ‘Points of Connection’ project aims to integrate autistic people from the start of the project, so that they can contribute their points of view and proposals at the different stages of the project, and carry out a needs analysis on the quality of life of autistic people.
APVA has already met with the group of young people three times and, during these meetings, we have discussed the project and its objective, given our feedback on the questionnaire being developed on quality of life, debated issues such as inclusion and accessibility, and shared experiences and interests.
On behalf of APVA, we would like to thank the eight autistic young people in this group for their contribution and willingness to take part in the project and its activities.
The questionnaire will be published soon, as will the project website!
Disclaimer: Funded by the European Union. However, the views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the EACEA can be held responsible for them.
