Europe is currently facing great challenges – growing inequalities; high unemployment; persistent discrimination of disadvantaged groups such as the Roma, refugees and migrants; insufficient basic skills – which could be tackled by reaching out to socially and educationally disadvantaged adults, engaging them in lifelong opportunities and valuing their contribution to the adult education sector.
The OED Grundtvig network has already made some big steps in the right direction by successfully developing guidelines for trainers and staff in adult education as well as policy recommendations for policy-makers at different levels. The implOED project aims to implement the results of the OED Grundtvig network at policy level and in the adult education sector.
Our objectives
- better integration of disadvantaged groups
- a stronger intercultural understanding of the diverse groups for each other
- more empowered and active citizens based on their learning and development
- more diverse adult education institutions, which will help them be more effective instruments of integration
- the stronger involvement of a diverse group of learners, which will on the one hand improve the participation in lifelong learning, but also the active citizenship and the integration of learners´ voices.
By making outreach strategies mainstreamed and adult education more diverse, this project will engage disadvantaged adults in learning which substantially contribute to achieving of the ET2020 benchmarks, decreasing the number of NEETS and reducing geographic and social disparities within the EU. By fostering the empowerment of learners, the project will create a more inclusive and fair society, increase active citizenship and make education policies more effective for the needs of the disadvantaged groups.
The final aim of the project is to start a change in the mind-set of policy-makers and adult education providers in order to make them aware of the fact that outreach, empowerment and diversity are possible to achieve.
How will we do this work?
The consortium will work in two clusters:
- Implementing OED on the provider level: six partners will target staff, managers and trainers/teachers in adult education. They will rely on their membership and their knowledge of the challenges in their geographical areas to adapt the guidelines to the training needs in their countries and regions.
- Implementing OED on the policy level: five partners will target regional, national and European policy-makers by informing and training policy-makers on the concepts and implementation of OED. The results of the network will hopefully inspire more activity on behalf of policy makers in the targeted areas.
All the partners will very closely monitor the questions, challenges and successes of their activities through an impact assessment. The final product of implOED will be an instruction manual for implementing OED that will bring together the learning points of all the partners, propose concrete solutions on how make outreach, empowerment and diversity a reality as well as suggestions on how to transfer the OED products to different sectors and geographical areas.
Timeline of the project:
- Kick off Meeting- Porto, 7-8 March 2016
- Second partner meeting – Paris, 3-4 October 2016
- Third partner meeting – Helsinki, November 2017
- Final partner meeting – Brussels, October 2018
Background: OED Grundtvig network
The Outreach, Empowerment, Diversity Grundtvig Network (OED) is an award-winning EU funded project that tackled the need for outreach to marginalised groups, especially migrants and ethnic minorities, for the development of more diversity in adult education. It ran between 2011 and 2014. The project aimed at tackling the need for outreach to marginalised groups, especially migrants and ethnic minorities, for the development of more diversity in adult education, and especially the inclusion of learners´ voices, and for the empowerment of its learners to become active European citizens.
The project
- provided a collection and analysis of good practice examples from across Europe that tackle the overlap of social inclusion and active citizenship (EN, FR, DE)
- analysed outreach strategies to marginalised groups and provide information to other adult education institutions how to organise this
- promoted diversity in adult education organisations and their training
- developed empowerment strategies based on good practice and experiences of the network in order to activate learners from disadvantaged backgrounds
- improved teaching methodology for diverse target groups that empowers them and publish methodology guidelines for trainers (EN, DE, FR)
- improved the management of adult education institutions through diversity and the inclusion of learners´ voices
- analysed how including diverse learners´ voices can improve adult education
- provided policy recommendations that will tackle the integration of marginalised groups, their empowerment and participation in lifelong learning (EN, FR, DE).
- presented the results at a European conference in Brussels in 2014.
The implOED aims at implementing the results of the OED Grundtvig network to policy level and adult education sector.