Erasmus + programme: Cultural Mediators in the Postal Sector Project – CULMED

Programme area: Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency
Status: On-going
Duration: 2018-2020
Project number 2018 – 1 – EL01 -KA202 -047904

Cultural Mediators in the Postal Sector (CULMED) falls under the European Commission’s Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency’s (EACEA’s) and it is funded by the Erasmus+ Programme - Key Action 2: KA202 - Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training-Cooperation for Innovation and Exchange of Good Practices.  

With a duration of two years (2018 to 2020), CULMED Project falls under PostEurop Corporate Social Responsibility Activities (CSR-C) and the Training Working Group. The CULMED Project’s Consortium is led by the National Centre for Social Research (ΕΚΚΕ) and it includes PostEurop members (Hellenic Post, Posta Romana), PostEurop, the National Institute for Research and Development in Informatics, KEK-ELTA, EEO GROUP,  and EUROFED.

The Postal sector is going through a period of profound change. Due to the latest technological developments, economic liberalisation, shift in consumption trends and change of customers’ expectations, the postal sector is facing many challenges.  Within this process, the employees’ know-how has been recognised as a crucial element to be adapted and transformed.

Meanwhile, the migration crisis is having a significant impact on the EU Member States as the presence of refugees and third country nationals is rapidly increasing. Therefore, the development of efficient models of inclusion is becoming increasingly urgent. In the hosting countries, migrants and refugees are facing cultural and language barriers, risks of stigmatisation in education and other social activities, which hamper their possibility of being fully included.

The CULMED Project originates from this context with the scope of increasing social inclusion and improving the quality of delivery and access to postal services. The CULMED Project aims to design a joint curriculum for post employees in order to create a multicultural environment within the post offices, while delivering services.  Immigrants usually have difficulties in dealing with diversity, in transacting and doing business with “unknown” people in unfamiliar environments. Due to the lack of knowledge of the “other” by local citizens, this misunderstanding is further emphasised.

The training programme designed within the CULMED Project will include soft skills, language skills and it targets immigrants indirectly, which will increase their knowledge about postal services. Through the training, cultural mediators as post professionals will favour relations between local and foreign citizens and they will support a mutual understanding.

The results of the CULMED Project will be the following:

• A situation analysis in which each partner country defines the internal and external factors of the post organization, and identifies the immigrant as a customer, the business environment, the post officers’ characteristics and the possession of soft skills.
• The preparation of a Curriculum dedicated to the domain of Cultural Mediators that will be delivered in an innovative way, interactive, experiential seminar that directly tackle day-to-day problems faced in a multicultural society.
• A pilot implementation: the e- training program will have a trial run in each county post offices.

Therefore, the CULMED Project is addressed to several target groups:

• Post office employees current and future.
• Local and rural societies.
• Public administration and organizations that are delivering services to migrants.
• Immigrants population.

Last updated 12 September 2019