Author: oed-admin

Engaging socially and educationally disadvantaged adults in lifelong learning is possible: find out how in the implOED manual. The Implementing Outreach, Empowerment and Diversity project (implOED) has just launched a comprehensive and hands-on document which will help policy makers and practitioners in the field of adult education and beyond to improve practitioners’ skills as adult educators, involve learners in self-determination of their learning and to find out what makes a difference at policy level. The goal is to achieve increased social justice, emancipation, integration and inclusion. As such, both the education sector and society will benefit from the long-term positive impact of implementing the approaches detailed in the implOED manual. The manual, which is now available on the project website:  Presents the practice of inclusion - focusing on outreach, empowerment…

Versatile approaches to the inclusion of disadvantaged learners in adult education were at the centre at the ImplOED final conference. The conference Transforming lives, society and adult education through outreach, empowerment and diversity was held in Brussels on 16th of October. "Adults have a big impact on children which is why it's important to fight for non-formal and informal adult education,” said Renilde Reynders from National Agency for Erasmus+ in Flanders in her opening words. At the conference, project partnes, adult educators, learners and policy-makers got the chance to share their thoughts and experiences on how to improve outreach, empowerment and diversity (OED) in adult education. During its lifespan the ImplOED project has implemented the recommendations produced in the previous OED project for policy-makers and adult education providers on how…

IMPLEMENTING OUTREACH, EMPOWERMENT, DIVERSITY. KERIGMA in cooperation with IEFP (Professional job and training institute) reached out to disadvantaged learners who haven’t had the same access to education or have had difficulties in following the traditional educational path. These include people from disadvantaged groups like Roma people, people with learning disabilities, problems with addiction, people with mental health problems, etc. In this workshop we talked with people about how learning has impacted their lives and how being able to start learning again has influenced their life and what their expectations are for the future impact of said learning. Kerigma's role Kerigma has the responsibility of educating and validating the skills of these learners to give them a better chance of getting a job in the future. Kerigma has invited trainers from…

IMPLEMENTING OUTREACH, EMPOWERMENT, DIVERSITY. Adult education can be a powerful tool to change societies. The guiding principles of OED are an example of it.  When the Swedish service organisation for the Swedish folk high school. FSO, together with the board for EAEA in May 2018 arranged a seminar in the Swedish folk high school Tollare folk high school on Folkbildning and Adult education from a European Perspective, it was said more than once that adult learning can contribute to the development of society. In the seminar it was discussed what adult education needs to be able to contribute to a democratic development. Lee Rachel Andersen from Denmark lectured at the seminar. She has, together with Tomas Björkman from Sweden, written a book about how societies can go through major technological,…

IMPLEMENTING OUTREACH, EMPOWERMENT, DIVERSITY. Trainers of regional and national organisations engaged in lifelong learning in Naples gathered to discuss strategies for greater involvement of migrant adults in language learning, intercultural exchange and active citizenship. The meeting held in May was attended by trainers of organisations CIDIS, CARITAS, DEDALUS, ARCI CASERTA and SOLIDARCI. The idea was to improve the involvement of migrant adults in Learning activities in the region. The in-depth topics were: How do you cross the Adult migrants' educational needs with their strengths? How to transform the training into an attractive and engaging proposal for Adult migrants? What are the best strategies in order to enhance adult migrants' education? The event enabled the participants to make new contacts in terms of working for the learning offers for migrant adults.…

IMPLEMENTING OUTREACH, EMPOWERMENT, DIVERSITY. On February 26th 2018 a workshop was organised for teachers of VHS Vienna who are working in the context of a big project called „integration from day one“ funded by the city of Vienna and the ESF which is addressing all refugees who are currently supported by the City’s refugee funds. In this context reaching out means reaching out to individuals in a course context rather than reaching out to people outside the course context. The workshop was a blend of reflection and a debate on the OED guidelines and the methods described therein. The participants agreed that the OED “methods” are extremely suitable for the groups of refugees as empowerment seems to be the overruling demand for these people. Especially the thematic area of what…

IMPLEMENTING OUTREACH, EMPOWERMENT, DIVERSITY. The ImplOED webinars organised in the United Kingdom focused on outreach. The conclusions of the events organised underlined the need to put the learner in the centre of activities. The UK implOED team decided to focus mainly on ‘outreach’, since this concept has been relatively neglected in non-formal and community learning in recent years in UK policy and practice, whereas diversity has been comparatively well supported. To this end, we have led three workshops - two face to face, in very different contexts, and one by webinar to have a wider reach.  The title of the workshops was ‘Re-inventing Outreach’. This title was influenced by Veronica McGivney’s ‘Recovering Outreach’ (NIACE, 2000) as it was considered that this was a good starting point for discussion about the…

IMPLEMENTING OUTREACH, EMPOWERMENT, DIVERSITY. How to meet the needs of the learners? How to engage participants in learning? The first Cluster Exchange meeting on ImplOED organized in Italy discussed these issues and more on March 26th 2018 in Modena. The meeting was organized by Solidarci in collaboration with Centro culturale Francesco Luigi Ferrari and the coop. Aretés of Modena. The meeting was attended by the CPIA of Modena, the Municipality of Modena and the Center for Employment, the professional training center MoFORM, the editorial staff of the 'Ero Straniero' newspaper, the InFormedia center, CSV Modena, Coop. Caleids, Coop. Nonsoloanziani. Through a World Café activity, the participants engaged in a discussion on how to meet the needs of the learners, how to make training proposals attractive for learners and on adult…

IMPLEMENTING OUTREACH, EMPOWERMENT, DIVERSITY. In Estonia, reaching out to disadvantaged learners has not only been in the focus of the ImplOED project, but of the whole participating organisation, ENAEA. Working with the OED concept convinced Estonian Non-formal Adult Education Association (ENAEA) that diversity of member organisations is a strength and provides more capacity to work for the outreach and empowerment of adult learners. As its ImplOED activities, ENAEA organised a set of learning communities and meeting with local decision-makers and adult education practitioners. Learning communities on outreach ENAEA’s learning communities were set up for key learning providers, third sector organisations and other local institutions. The learning communities discussed how to reach out to adults who have less access to lifelong learning in Estonia. The participants emphasised the necessity to collaborate with…

IMPLEMENTING OUTREACH, EMPOWERMENT, DIVERSITY. DAFNI KEK in cooperation with Cafe Gefires – the social cooperative of people with mental health disabilities – organised an open week of information and a webinar to introduce the main concepts of outreach, empowerment and diversity to people working with the Roma, refugees, migrants and people with mental health issues as well as volunteers and educators working with disadvantaged groups. The main goal of the events organised was to provide people interested in working with the concepts of reaching out to disadvantaged learners with a list of expected outcomes based on the OED project results. The OED Guidelines for adult education practitioners translated into Greek served as a tool. “We wanted to discuss how learners and workers can actually implement the good practices that set…