EMC – A Business in My School

What is EMC?

Una Empresa en mi Centro (EMC) is an educational project aimed at students with special education needs and users of Integration Support Centers. 

During the school year, the recipients of the EMC project create and manage an educational cooperative where they craft handmade products to sell at a local market or fair.

Objectives

General

• Spread the entrepreneurial culture among people with intellectual disabilities, promoting behaviors and attitudes of collaboration, conflict resolution, and the assumption of problems and responsibilities. 

   

Specific

• Exercise and develop the skills that are fundamental to all learning: attention and observation, memory, language, thinking, time control, spatial structuring, artistic expression, self-awareness, specific psychomotor skills, etc.

• Stimulate the development of entrepreneurial skills: planning, decision-making, responsibility, creativity, self-esteem, etc.

• Help the students/participants to actively understand the labor world through a real situation, such as creating and managing their own cooperative.

• Facilitate the students'/participants' transition to adult life in the role of consumer citizens.

Methodology

The EMC methodology is characterized by being:

• Practical: numerous functional exercises are used to obtain observable results, connecting theory with what will be useful and applicable.
• Adapted: content is flexible and adjusted to the characteristics, concerns, and real needs of the target group.
• Comprehensive: it enhances competencies by integrating “knowing” (concepts, information, theory), “wanting” (motivation, attitudes, and emotional aspects), and “being able to” (skills and personal resources).
• Participatory and cooperative: techniques are used to encourage the group to build its own learning actively, and cooperative work is promoted. The teacher/educator is a facilitator of learning, not a transmitter of knowledge or the protagonist in the teaching-learning process. 

• Experiential and motivating: it addresses the group and the person in all their dimensions, interrelating reason, emotion, action, and context. Learning comes from personal experiences, which makes it easier to motivate participants.

  
   

  
   

Materials

For Students

"A Business in My School" (1st edition 2007).
The student manual, published in Spanish and Galician, consists of six teaching units detailed below:

• Teaching Unit 1: “We Do Many Things”.
• Teaching Unit 2: “We Create Our Business”.
• Teaching Unit 3: “We Promote Our Cooperative”.
• Teaching Unit 4: “We Manufacture Our Products”.
• Teaching Unit 5: “We Keep the Accounts”.
• Teaching Unit 6: “We Prepare Our Sales”.
   

For Teachers

Online educational resources on the project’s educational platform:

• Teacher support modules. 
• Complementary workshops.
• Workshops manuals.
• Pedagogical interest links.