CERCINA - Cooperativa para o Ensino, Reabilitação, Capacitação e Inclusão da Nazaré, CRL

CERCI movement is an associative movement of parents and professionals looking for support (educational, occupational, labor and/or social inclusion) for people in disadvantage/with special needs. The group of founders started to work on it in 1979 and CERCINA, CRL - Cooperativa de Ensino, Reabilitação, Capacitação e Inclusão da Nazaré was formally constituted three years later (1981) on the 5th of February. At that time the main focus was to support children with special needs and schoolar age at Socio Educational Center department (Centro Sócio-Educativo). In 1991 a new department was created: Center of Occupational Activities (Centro de Atividades Ocupacionais) supports those with special needs and with more than 16 years-old. After some years in the old CTT facilities (at Nazaré) all the activities where changed to a new buiding built with the support of IEFP (a governamental organisation that supports training and labor). Nowadays activities are placed over 4 buildings:- IEFP building, Lar Residencial/Residência Autónoma, Old-School Building, Armazém 55. Along the years different projects were developed: - 1998/1999 (schoolar year), “UMA ESCOLA PARA TODOS”: to support children with special needs who were at regular school giving them therapeutic support as psychology, psychomotricity, speech therapy,... - 2000, CERCINA was accredited by IQF as training entity, Gardening and Book Binding Trainings started - 2003, ANIMART: in a partnership with the City Hall to prevent drug consumption among the children between 6 and 10 years-old; PIEF: a program to support children under 16 years-old to stay and finish school instead of starting to work and being exploited; OPORTUNIDADES: training in electricity, cleaning and cooking fields to those that benefit of the social insertion income. Also during 2003, CERCINA took part of: Executive Group of the Local Council of Social Action (CLAS), Training Center of the Schools’ Associations (CEFAE), Commission for the Protection of Children and Youngsters of Nazaré (CPCJ) and, City Council of Education (CLE). - 2004, @RTNET, a project with the City Hall, whose goals are the development of the information society and the fight against info-exclusion - 2005, ANIMART, PIEF and OPORTUNIDADES come to an end, because the financial support ended - 2006, Center for Local Support for Immigrants’ Integration (CLAII) and Center of Recognition, Validation and Certification of Competences (RVCC) started. ATL finished the activities according to the Education Ministry Guidelines. Boa Onda from Programa Escolhas (national program supported by the governement) a program that has as main objective prevent the school failure and abandonment, for children and young people aged between 6 and 24 years also started - 2007, RVCC becames renewed, giving a more personal and specific support to people needs and goals, and being possible to achieve secondary school qualification; RSV: Recreative Safe Vibe, is a research project and focus on intervention on individuals that use synthetic substances - 2008, Modular Training Certified for people (un)employed who wants to develop skills, fostering adaptation to the changing needs of the labor market. In the recent years, CERCINA investment was mainly on the quality certification according to the principles of quality EQUASS (European Quality in Social Services).