COOP DE ENSEÑANZA DE PROF NTRA SRA DE LOURDES

The Cooperative School Nuestra Señora de Lourdes is a cooperative institution of education located in Coín, in the region of the Guadalhorce’s Valley. Our school has all the educative phases, from nursery, pre-primary school, primary school, secondary school/high school and bachillerato. However, our school not only has a formal education proposal but also an holistic perspective of the education, where we also integrate non-formal education and activities to promote the personal growth of our students and their improvement in key skills for their future. In this way, we also have the necessary facilities in our center such as school center, 3 basketball courts, modern and ITC adapted classes, etc. In relation with staff and services, we have an integration class, speech therapist, physiotherapy, special education teacher, psychologist and the rest of the educative staff specialist in each subject. Also we offer a high number of extra activities for students and also for parents, such as computer classes, yoga, sports, personal development and we have a sport club, a language class (since we are a Cambridge examination center) and music school. Our school has been working for more than 30 years with staff especially focused in improving the communication between students/teachers and families. We care for offering the best service to our students and families and also the best education so they can feel listened, valued and part of the learning process. Furthermore, our school is integrated in our region in the sense of cooperating with the people and associations which are part of it, such as the Rural Development Group of our region, the Guadalhorce's Valley. We are part of the Board of the entitty and we also collaborate in activities proposed by them like the program for Peer to Peer Mediation, gender equality trainings, the pact for inclusive language or other youth activities proposed by local associations like IMAGINA, with the promotion of youth projects in the field of Erasmus + for young people of our center. Our main target groups are therefore: -Students from the center -Families -Teaching community -Other educational centers, associations and local entities with which we collaborate Our main objectives are to offer a complete education that puts our students in the center of the system, allowing the teaching community to use diverse, innovative and creative methodologies of education that could teach not only contents but also also values. In this sense, we believe in the power of the combination between formal education and non-formal education to offer a complete opportunity of development to our students. With this combination, we are able to work on key competences that only with formal education would remain underdeveloped. An example of this would be social and civic competences, competences related to the sense of initiative and entrepreneurship or cultural expression and awareness. The different ways of combining ENF and EF at the Colegio de Lourdes is mainly through the opportunities offered by programs such as Erasmus + and CES. In this sense, volunteering has brought enormous benefits to our center, creating opportunities for cultural exchange between students and volunteers, but also giving us an opportunity to address specific issues that are necessary in our environment such as rural empowerment, the fight against racism and xenophobia, promoting a healthy and active lifestyle through sport or raising awareness of European values and active citizenship. Our goal for the coming years is to continue promoting multiculturalism in the center, mobility opportunities for young people from rural areas, especially those with fewer opportunities, as well as creating opportunities for the exchange of good practices, creating learning opportunities for teachers and improving the educational experience of our entire educative community.