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This paper presents a service-learning project embedded in a Social and Intercultural Pedagogy course at a Northern Italian university, developed in the framework of the European Homelessness Count (EHC), a multi-city European research initiative on homelessness. The EHC is a coordinated point-in-time count based on the ETHOS Light typology, combining street counts and surveys in services to generate comparable data for evidence-informed housing and social policies at local, national and European levels. In Italy, the project is led academically by the University of Catania, in partnership with fio.PSD, the national federation of organisations working with people experiencing homelessness, which supports methodological adaptation, national training and the connection between municipalities, third-sector organisations and volunteers. For the 2025 wave, Italian participation includes cities such as Brescia, Catania and Milan, within a wider European network of 35 cities.
Within this framework, the service-learning project “A research and solidarity experience on homelessness” engaged students as co-researchers in the Brescia implementation of the EHC. The pedagogical design articulated four interconnected phases: (1) participatory analysis of local needs during course sessions; (2) specialist training on methodological, ethical and communicative aspects of street and service-based data collection; (3) field implementation within multidisciplinary teams during the night street count and in homelessness services; and (4) structured debriefing, reflective learning diaries and co-organisation of a public seminar on homelessness. Students were thus positioned not as passive trainees but as active contributors to a European research process with direct relevance for democratic citizenship and social justice, as the data inform policy debates on severe adult marginality and housing exclusion.
Drawing on project documentation, classroom debriefings and students’ reflective diaries, the paper analyses learning outcomes along three dimensions. First, in terms of epistemic and critical awareness, students report a shift from individualised and moralising explanations of homelessness towards structural and intersectional understandings, linking personal biographies to social dimensions, as labour precarity, welfare retrenchment, migration trajectories and housing market dynamics. Second, at the relational and ethical level, students describe the development of intercultural communication skills, a heightened sensitivity to vulnerability in public space, and a more nuanced grasp of privacy and emotional boundaries in research encounters. Third, regarding professional and methodological competencies, the experience strengthened their capacity to engage in community assessment, to use standardised research tools in real-world contexts and to work collaboratively within complex welfare networks.
The analysis suggests that participation in an internationally coordinated research project such as the EHC can function as a powerful service-learning device for cultivating democratic competencies in higher education. By combining rigorous research tasks with civic engagement, and by situating students within translocal partnerships between universities, NGOs and public services, the project fosters transformative learning processes and supports the formation of socially responsible professionals committed to social justice and inclusive citizenship.