Team

CHRIS DOWLING
ADVISER

Chris is an education specialist, social pedagogist and qualified ESOL teacher with over 10 years’ experience working in both formal and non-formal education settings. He is one of Springboard’s founding members, and has developed programmes and delivered workshops for children and youth from disadvantaged backgrounds (particularly asylum-seekers and child workers) in the UK, Italy, Turkey and South America. He is currently based in Bologna, Italy, where he completed his master’s degree in Planning and Management of Education Services and where he works as a programme manager, language teacher, and youth worker with separated children and migrant youth developing holistic educational programmes as well as training people in digital and smartphone skills for employment.

Chris believes that language learning is a fundamental step in facilitating the social inclusion of refugees and asylum seekers, and that language has to be learnt contextually and experientially, both within and outside the classroom.