Urban SOS towards a trans-disciplinary, inclusive sustainable future, project id: 2019-1-NL01-KA203-060543

An increasingly urgent social issue is the rise of inequalities amongst inhabitants of European cities. Due to processes of migration, urbanization and the unequal accumulation of economic growth in many urban areas, cities have become intersections of social stratification. Social workers deal with the challenges of these inequalities every day.

On a European level, social workers tend to take the urban context for granted. While social work in urban areas has long been a topic of interest to researchers, very few social workers are educated to relate to and meet the challenges of the ‘Urban Age’. Yet, if we wish to generate opportunities for
socially sustainable lives, there is an urgency to educate social workers to be knowledgeable about the ways in which cities create, and are created by, social issues and inequality. In short, there is a need for a new analytical framework in urban social work.

Urban SOS brings together educational institutions and work place organizations who work in the cities with social issues caused by life in the City. The objective of the Urban SOS partnership is to contribute to the transnational and transdisciplinary innovation of European social work and social
work education.

Project outputs:
-O1: A framework for phronetic urban social work: mapping and analysing the intersections between urbanisation, lived experiences and social issues in the partner cities based on fieldwork carried out at our practice partners.
-O2: Train the educators program: producing a program to train social work educators to understand and teach the new paradigm for urban social work.
-O3: Online training course for professionals: producing innovative education methods and professional approaches (course format: graphic novels);
-O4: Online learning platform (gamification, podcasts, films etc.)