Associação ES+

Associação ES+ is a recent non-profit association, established in 2021, by a multidisciplinary team of seven people (two teachers, one psychologist, three specialists on Educational Science and one tech specialist) with significant experience in the youth field. AES+ aims to think about education by creating solutions and projects to promote children’s and youth’s academic success. AES+ main activities include: - To promote school reintegration of students in the process of dropping out of school. - To share experiences and good practices to help students at risk of failing or dropping out of school. - To develop adequate strategies to support all students. - To establish strategical partnerships with schools and respective educational actors in order to implement intervention programs. Despite being based in Sintra, AES+ aims to intervene in different educational and social contexts across the country by working with different stakeholders like municipalities, schools, and other social entities such as CPCJ (Children and Youth Protection Commission in Portugal) and IEFP (Institute for Employment and Vocational Training). AES+ was initially established to create and manage Sintra’s Second Chance School (a response to adolescents and young adults out of school), in partnership with the Ministry of Education, the municipality and one school group. In the upcoming years, AES+ purpose is to develop different projects to help schools to better respond to students at risk of failing or dropping out. The target audience will be students, educators, and other school assistants, as well as families. The activities will include the following: education talks, discussion forums with companies, students, and family networks. AES+ arises as a follow-up of SintraES+, a project designed to promote school success in Sintra that has been implemented since 2018. With over 90 different projects on innovation and differentiation of educational practices, parenthood, social inclusion in a school environment, and social and emotional competences, SintraES+ has worked in 21 school districts, with 4000 teachers involved and the results were very promising within the school community. Thus, the managing team decided to found AES+ in order to continue this work. All this experience and resourcefulness allow us to implement this kind of projects and makes it possible for AES+ to do differentiating work in the communities, creating value for the people involved and fostering children’s and adolescent’s wellbeing.