The project focuses on higher education for human services professionals by developing a multilingual Nordic digital curriculum to enhance LGBTQIA+ competencies within social work and healthcare. Research has highlighted the limited and inadequate coverage of these topics in existing social and healthcare education programs.

There are challenges that include inadequate training about encountering LGBTQIA+ populations, professional’s possible biases to encounter LGBTQIA+ people and heteronormativity in social work practice. These issues negatively impact LGBTQIA+ individuals  and increase their unequal position in social and healthcare settings.

The project uses a co-creation approach involving students, NGOs, and experts to create a digital curriculum accessible in Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, and English. The curriculum includes modules covering sexual and gender diversity, life course perspectives, and LGBTQIA+ issues in social work and healthcare. The curriculum will be hosted on a digital platform and made openly available for students, professionals, and educators.

Through the Safe schools project, the organisations Likestillingssenteret KUN (NO), Ekvalita (FI), and Elevernas Riksförbund (SE) have developed a joint Nordic method based on norm criticism to create an inclusive and equal school with a focus on increased student participation in the “Safe School” project.

This has been done through five different work packages involving visits and workshops with student councils, principals and student representatives at upper secondary schools in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Åland. Together with student councils and student representatives, the project has tested and further developed methods that can be used to strengthen student participation and the relevance and influence of student councils.

Trygga skolan has worked to increase safety at school and to promote a greater diversity of voices in student council work and the prevention of exclusion, bullying and harassment. The results of the project have now been compiled in a methodology book and on a website focusing on norm-critical work in schools.