On 9^th- 10^th November 2021 Hi-Ability project partners, theEuropean Association of Service providers for Persons with Disabilities(EASPD),CONTROVENTO Onlus,  Trekkify, EPIONI, Healthy Life Academy, held their 2nd transnational project meeting in Athens and Fylis in Greece. During this meeting, the project partners discussed various updates on project-related activities along with a general overview of the project. They also brought to the forefront a new toolkit for educators of persons with intellectual disability (PWID) outside of the formal education system which will be made available by the end of November 2021. The toolkit gives a concrete syllabus and training structure that can be used by these educators.

In its capacity, the toolkit will serve as a guide for adult educators to be able to apply the principles of adult education in the field of environmental education and outdoor learning with vulnerable learners. It also provides guidelines for learners, trainers and organisations. 

In terms of structure, the toolkit consists of:

• A pedagogical and didactic framework for training methodology on outdoor and cognitive disability. The framework was created by the combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods. The analysis of all countries represented in the partnership done in the first five months of the project helped in creating the framework.
• A supporting element of this toolkit are PowerPoint presentations which are provided to educators to deliver the session to other fellow educators.
• An activity template which consists of instructions that the educators can use while implementing practical activities with PWIDs and also potentially help in deepening the knowledge of the toolkit via this template.
• Open Education Resources (OERs) are also a part of the toolkit which will help in explaining the topic of the toolkit better.

The toolkit is an effort to emancipate PWIDs through approaching nature and environmental issues and allowing the educators to provide non-formal training to adults in different European countries. This toolkit will soon be available on EASPD’s e-learning platform, DLot.

The Hi-Ability project use a multi-step approach to achieve its objectives, of which the toolkit is one of the project outputs. Others include:

• Training the trainers: During this step 14 participants will take part in the trainings that will focus on educators working with people with intellectual disabilities as well as staff members of organisations active in the field of outdoor activities. The objectives of this training will be to test and review the modules and help develop educational materials and training courses for professionals working with people with disabilities to improve their skills in outdoor education activities;
• Training people with disabilities as “assistants” to professional guides for outdoor/nature tours: beneficiaries will acquire personal and professional skills through a specific training course and will be able to test their acquired skills by a pilot experimentation in all involved countries;
• Creation of an app to facilitate the participation of people with DI in outdoor activities;
• Development of policy recommendations and guidelines to facilitate the transferability of the model to all EU countries.

The Hi-Ability project promotes an education for autonomy, independent and inclusive life for adults with intellectual disabilities (ID), in a context still not very accessible such as hiking and eco-tourism. The next project output for 2022 includes a mobile application that will be developed to assist PWID in their outdoor activities.

Creating this application is yet again an attempt at making outdoor activities like hiking and environmental tourism accessible for persons with intellectual disabilities. It will allow users to view and obtain information about accessible routes mapped and to include practical information for the organization of outdoor activities to be carried out with the support of hiking experts

The mobile application will have features like accessible trails mapped by partners; parts of trail information in an accessible language; geofencing; standard post-hike feedback system.

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