The Barcelona City Council called last week the first Barcelona Educational Innovation Awards, a prize that promotes the integration of school education projects into the city, especially those relating to social inclusion. Among the 16 awarded candidates, UPF’s Prometeus project came out as a winner in the category ”City projects”.

Prometeus, a project promoted by the Center for Learning Innovation and Knowledge (CLIK), is an action plan that makes it possible for secondary education students of impoverished city areas such as El Raval to access universities. Participants of this project also have the opportunity to apply for the UPF salary scholarship programme, a financial grant scheme that allows students to pay for their university enrolment fees and gives them a monthly compensation.

The agents involved in the Prometeus project are the following:

• Project drivers: Integral Educational Association of El Raval (AEI Raval) and the Periodico of El Raval, a local newspaper.

• Secondary Education Centers: Instituto Milà i Fontanals and Instituto Miquel Tarradell. Secondary schools from which economically disadvantaged students were selected.

• Monitoring board: District of Ciutat Vella, Barcelona Education Consortium, Barcelona Municipal Education Institute (IMEB). The Monitoring Board is formed by the institutions that design, promote and guarantee the development of the Prometeus project. They also monitor the participating students and review the shared work procedures.

• Core Team: Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), University of Barcelona (UB), Universitat Autònoma of Barcelona (UAB) and Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC). The functions of this team are to build a strategic vision of the project, develop a resource bank with the project’s complementary activities, monitor the data to evaluate the project results and impact, and transfer the experience to other city areas.