SERN is a transnational network of 55 local and regional authorities in Sweden and Italy, particularly in the Emilia-Romagna area. The network was founded in February 2005 with the main objective of developing in a structural manner the relations between its members in the two countries.
The main objective is to foster relations and exchanges of good practices among the members and therefore to create a model of cooperation stretching over several policy areas and involving different level of government and at the same time a plurality of actors like educational institutions and NGOs.
It has been leading several transnational projects aimed at capacity building of local and regional authorities when it comes to the management and planning of transnational projects. The network has adopted a strategy in 2011 that provides particular attention to the development of processes of cooperation among the members in the field of the ECEC.
In the field of ECEC, SERN has been promoting the development of several projects with the support of LLP among which a number of Comenius partnerships, a Comenius Regio between Emilia Romagna(IT) and Östergötland(SE) on integration of pupils in the school context. To note also a three-year-project of pre-school staff exchange among the members organisations based on job shadowing. This exchange project involved more than 60 pre-school teachers and it has been identified as best practice at national level by the Italian LLP National Agency in the framework of in service-training actions of the programme (pre-schools.sern.eu).
The network counts many links with other networks/association of local and regional organisations in 10 European countries and therefore offers a large basis of dissemination.
SERN has been the coordinating organization of CREANET, a Comenius Multilateral Network started in late 2010. The project has been dealing with the theme of Creativity in pre-school in ECEC. In the context of the project the theme of physical activity in the pre-school context as a tool to foster creativity in children has emerged as an important element and area of work.