The Accompany Programme reached nearly a thousand children and young people - Portal do Município de Vila Nova de Famalicão - Portugal

The Accompany Programme, aimed at children and young people at risk of dropping out of school, worked with nearly a thousand students from different schools in the municipality of Vila Nova de Famalicão throughout the 2022/2023 school year.

Promoted by the Municipality of Famalicão through the Education department, the programme seeks to improve school performance through processes of empowerment, inclusion and social involvement of students and complementary actions of non-formal education and training in emotional intelligence.

With an educational success rate of over 99%, each of the children and young people involved in Acompanhar participated in at least 40 hours of group training, through peer tutoring and mentoring programmes, in the 53 socio-educational interventions carried out over the last two years.

Continuous monitoring has shown that, overall, the Accompany Programme has enabled the progressive improvement and stabilisation of the school engagement rates of the students involved, with around a third of them having had at least two retentions in their education and now attending Education and Training Courses, Vocational Courses and Alternative Training Paths.