international adult education projects

Reimagining adult education and lifelong learning for all: Historical and critical perspectives

• Introduction
• Published: 30 May 2022
• Volume 68 , pages 165–194, ( 2022 )

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• Aaron Benavot   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4115-0323 1 ,
• Catherine Odora Hoppers   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5324-7371 2 ,
• Ashley Stepanek Lockhart   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6647-2391 3 &
• Heribert Hinzen 4  

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This special issue of the International Review of Education explores the future of adult education and lifelong learning from different historical and contemporary vantage points. It starts from a premise that the international adult education community is poised at a pivotal historical juncture. Looming large are the educational implications of climate change, environmental degradation and unsustainable lifestyles; widening social and economic divisions; weakening democratic institutions and processes; outbreaks of war, conflict and hate crimes; massive shifts in technology, globalisation and workplace relations; and migration movements and intergenerational demographic trends. How might the adult education community respond to these shifting realities and to what appear to be fragile and uncertain futures? The convening of the Seventh International Conference on Adult Education (CONFINTEA VII) provides a timely opportunity for the proponents and practitioners of adult education to consider ways of addressing these serious challenges.

Bringing our diverse experiences from the worlds of scholarship and policymaking to our collaboration as joint guest editors of this special issue, we see value in posing thought-provoking questions, recasting historical ideas in a new light, interrogating concepts and well-established policies, as a means of opening new windows into the future of adult education. Although we employ different writing styles and narrative voices, as is discernible in this introductory essay, we share a belief that now is a crucial time for the international adult education community to reimagine the purpose, vision, scale and scope of lifelong learning for adults. In addition to the points raised in the articles featured in this special issue, we put forward a series of suggestive guideposts to facilitate dialogue and debate. These include: (1) a retrospective look at the ambitious visions of the adult education community in the aftermath of the Second World War, when the foundational concept of “fundamental education” (UNESCO 1949a ) held sway; (2) possible openings to reposition adult education and lifelong learning in light of the ongoing integration of the agendas of global development, education and sustainability; and (3) notable insights and ideas emerging from the African experience and perspective of adult education and lifelong learning.

The articles featured in this special issue explore ways of expanding and institutionalising adult education for all within a lifelong learning perspective. They seek to contribute to discussions that bridge the CONFINTEA process of reviewing and improving with the wider 2030 Agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and, in so doing, carve out new vistas on the futures of adult education. In the final section of our editorial, we draw out key findings from the articles, together with ideas explicated in this Introduction, to formulate a succinct set of recommendations for due consideration.

Preliminary remarks

In this introductory essay, we refer to the adult education community and its organisational entities as an “adult education movement”. The reasons for this are many. First, it is worth recalling that organised labour and trade unions have been among the strongest supporters – and sometimes providers – of worker education in many countries and viewed expanding education opportunities for workers as part of a larger political agenda to secure workers’ rights (ILO 2007 ). Second, references to an “adult education movement” can be found in many national contexts, including the United States (Knowles 1994 ), Canada (Selman and Selman 2009 ) and South Africa (Aitchison 2003 ). Third, in recounting its history, the International Council for Adult Education (ICAE) refers to an international adult education movement: “The idea of having an international non-governmental body for the adult education movement was born in a discussion in a room in the Tokyo Prince Hotel in Japan where the Third International Conference on Adult Education was taking place in July of 1972” (ICAE, n.d., emphasis added). Fourth, some histories of adult and continuing education also use the term “movement” (Shannon 2015 ). Fifth, several key global education policy commitments have been framed as “movements” – examples include “the EFA movement” or the “functional literacy movement” or a “mass literacy movement”. Indeed, scholars of adult education have analysed the adult education field in the context of social movements (English and Mayo 2012 ). A recent indication of a growing adult education movement is the re-launch of ICAE’s flagship journal Convergence , after a break of more than a decade, focusing on areas like gender and environment, knowledge democracy and professional strengthening (Hall and Clover 2022 ), as well as links between ICAE and UNESCO (Hinzen 2022 ).

Our reference to an “international adult education movement” here is also meant to serve as a counterweight to the marginalisation of adult education around the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Representatives of the international adult education community were present at the Global Education for All Meeting in Muscat (May 2014) and later at the World Education Forum in Incheon (May 2015) during lively discussions over the post-2015 global education goal and its targets. However, when consensus emerged around several contentious issues, advocates of adult learning and education (ALE) were asked to get under the big tent notion of “lifelong learning”, to be mentioned in the formulation of the fourth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 4) itself,

Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all (UN 2015 , p. 14).

They were expected to be content with three – potentially four – targets that referenced adults: “women and men” should be provided with equal access “to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university” (SDG Target 4.3; ibid., p. 20); “youth and adults” should be equipped with “relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship” (SDG Target 4.4; ibid.); “all youth and a substantial proportion of adults, both men and women” should be enabled to “achieve literacy and numeracy” (SDG Target 4.6; ibid., p. 21), and finally “all learners” – including adults – should “acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development …” (SDG Target 4.7; ibid.). In agreeing to work under the banner of lifelong learning, the ALE leadership effectively conceded explicit references to the provision of adult learning and education inside the 10 SDG targets instead of pushing for a dedicated separate one, and thus inadvertently contributed to its subsequent invisibility (Benavot 2018 ). In this introductory essay, our reference to international adult education as a “movement” serves to reclaim the value, power and spirit of ALE as a collective and organisational manifestation.

In the next section, we focus on how supporters of adult education fashioned and established a broad international vision of the field in the post-World War II era. This focus is not meant to minimise the importance of international activities of adult educators in the first half of the 20th century. For example, the first international conference of adult education was held in 1929, in Cambridge (England), under the auspices of the World Association for Adult Education (WAAE), which was founded by Albert Mansbridge in 1918 (Ireland and Spezia 2014 ). Representatives of 33 governments and more than 300 stakeholders attended the one-week conference. In conjunction with this initial WAAE meeting, authors from 26 countries contributed chapters to the first International Handbook on Adult Education (ibid.).

Adult education: an international movement born out of war and crisis

In the aftermath of the Second World War, which resulted in unimaginable death, destruction and discontent, many international leaders sought to promote peace and understanding by eradicating “ignorance” and “illiteracy” in the world. Footnote 1 As the Preamble of the Constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) famously states: “since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men [and women] that the defences of peace must be constructed” (UNESCO 1945 , p. 1). Promoting international understanding and diminishing the prospects of war were not the only motives behind the push to expand education and increase literacy. International leaders at that time also articulated economic and social motives while addressing the root causes of the crisis.

Three-fourths of the world’s people today are under-housed, under-clothed, under-fed, illiterate. Now, as long as this continues to be true, we have a very poor foundation upon which to build the world (Yan Yangchu, quoted in Boel 2016 , p. 154).

These words by the Chinese educator Yan Yangchu, aka James Yen, a fierce advocate of adult literacy campaigns and mass education movements in pre-War China, helped convince UNESCO delegates to establish its first flagship programme – the Fundamental Education Programme – in May 1946. Education should involve instruction in all areas that

contribute to the development of well-rounded, responsible members of society … it is proposed that the Organization [UNESCO] should launch, upon a world scale, an attack upon ignorance by helping all Member States who desire such help to establish a minimum Fundamental Education for all their citizens (internal UNESCO Memorandum, quoted in Boel 2016 , pp. 153–154). Footnote 2

UNESCO’s understanding of “fundamental education” in these early years was humanistic, global, holistic and equity-oriented (Boel 2016 ; Watras 2010 ). It went beyond adult literacy campaigns to include a wide array of projects and programmes targeting marginalised adults and out-of-school youth and can thus be regarded as a forerunner of lifelong and life-wide education (Elfert 2018 ). The first of the 12 Monographs on Fundamental Education, published by UNESCO in 1949, stressed that “the aim of all education is to help men and women to live fuller and happier lives” (UNESCO 1949a , p. 9). In practical terms, the idea was that education would alter basic living conditions in social life through, for example, health education, domestic and vocational skills, knowledge and understanding of human society, including economic and social organisation, law and government. Fundamental education was thus an integrated community strategy to improve material conditions and reduce the impact of poverty as preconditions for an array of educational activities that would support the development of individual qualities needed “to live in the modern world, such as personal judgment and initiative, freedom from fear and superstition, sympathy and understanding for different points of view” (UNESCO 1949a , p. 11). Footnote 3 The notion and value of fundamental education gained further legitimacy after countries adopted Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN 1948 ), which stated that education at the “fundamental” stage was to be free. Footnote 4

Soon afterwards, when the (First) International Conference on Adult Education (CONFINTEA I) convened in Helsingør (Elsinore), Denmark in 1949, the 106 delegates agreed that adult education could and should play a formative role in fostering international understanding and world peace. Footnote 5 The idea was that adult education should serve as a bridge for intercultural exchange and reconciliation by contributing to the study of the life and circumstances of other peoples, their history, literature, art and other cultural achievements, as well as promoting technical assistance in low-income countries, and supporting the efforts of international organisations and the United Nations (UNESCO 1949b , pp. 28–30). The conference also embraced a decidedly holistic view of adult education, arguing that given the “deterioration in the material, spiritual and moral fabric of civilized life” (ibid., p. 28), adult education should help “rehabilitate world society with a new faith in [its] essential values and using knowledge in the pursuit of truth, freedom, justice and toleration” (ibid.). Although the delegates could not settle on a precise definition of adult education, they did agree on certain humanistic principles as a basis for expanding the adult education movement. These principles included, for example, the idea that adult education should practise a spirit of tolerance, uphold the value of freedom of thought and discussion, promote the study of world problems from both national and international perspectives, and emphasise the positive role of voluntary associations. The inspiring vision advanced at CONFINTEA I – to transform adults’ engagement within their communities and in the world – was clearly aligned with the growing interest in “fundamental education” as well as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN 1948 ).

UNESCO’s Fundamental Education Programme (FEP) sprouted many shoots during its heyday (Watras 2010 ). In 1947, UNESCO and the Haitian government inaugurated a first pilot project in the Marbial Valley region, a poor rural area of southern Haiti, with more than 20 trainers and teachers. To share ideas and experiences across newly established projects, UNESCO launched an Associated Projects scheme in 1949, which included more than 34 projects in 15 countries by 1951 (Boel 2016 ). UNESCO’s Regional Centre of Fundamental Education in Mexico opened its doors in 1951, and became a training centre for fundamental education teachers, trainers and professionals. A year later, UNESCO established another training centre in Egypt and passed a resolution creating an international network of Fundamental Education Centres. During the FEP’s existence (1946–1958), UNESCO was active in expanding literacy campaigns, building community centres, introducing new crops, promoting handicrafts and reducing disease in more than 60 of the then 82 UNESCO Member States. In many instances, these activities involved other United Nations (UN) agencies such as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO – raising awareness of land erosion), the World Health Organization (WHO – promoting hygiene and health) and the International Labour Organization (ILO – fostering handicrafts and local industries). These projects were designed to be participatory, empowering and contextualised. As Conrad Opper, then Director of UNESCO’s Fundamental Education Pilot Project in Haiti, stated:

Fundamental education … means a mass attack on poverty, disease and ignorance … Fundamental education must aim at changing lives from within. It must not impose on a community large social and economic development schemes, but lead the people patiently and unobtrusively to work for their own improvement, using as far as possible their own social institutions and their own leadership …. There is … no blue-print for fundamental education. Everything will depend on the team resources available, the human resources of the people and the way in which these two forces are brought together … fundamental education is not just bull-dozers, penicillin and cinema vans; it is bringing new life to a people. And in these sombre days, mending a life is a far tougher job than ending it (Opper 1951 , p. 5).

In time, however, the ambitions of the FEP collided with insufficient financial resources from UNESCO Member States to carry out additional projects and expand the network of training centres (Watras 2010 ). In addition, critiques about the notion and practice of fundamental education emerged both externally and internally (Boel 2016 ). The UN took issue with the scale and scope of FEP activities. UNESCO and the other specialised agencies (ILO, FAO and WHO) argued that they should have programme-execution responsibilities in their specific fields of competence and that the UN’s exclusive function should be inter-agency coordination. The UN, on the other hand, expressed concerns that the all-inclusive nature of “fundamental education” meant that UNESCO was moving beyond education into other sectors, and insisted that the work of the FEP be seen as only one aspect of the broader process of community development. Internally, several UNESCO Member States, such as the United States, took issue with the largesse of funds allocated to FEP projects and the lack of clearly defined outcomes and measurable results (Boel 2016 ). While data were collected on “the number of teachers and trainers trained, new literates, community centres, new crops introduced, handicraft production and reduction of victims of diseases”, it was more challenging to determine the number of adults leading “fuller and happier lives” (ibid., p. 161). External critiques of and internal opposition to fundamental education were followed by executive deliberations and commissioned reports which raised questions about the impact of UNESCO’s flagship programme and whether it was meeting its lofty ideals. In 1958, UNESCO’s General Conference decided to drop the use of this foundational concept, close the Fundamental Education division, merge it into another unit, and substitute less contentious terms like “adult education”, “adult literacy” and “youth activities” (Watras 2010 ). The final Monograph in the series on Fundamental Education was published in 1959 (Boel 2016 ).

Intensifying crises, different in scale and scope

Today, some 75 years after the FEP and the establishment of CONFINTEA conferences to review and improve ALE strategies, many more adults are considered “functionally literate” and rates of adult literacy have increased – albeit based on narrow definitions of literacy, conventionally measured (Benavot 2015 ). Despite this progress, adult literacy rates remain shockingly low in many countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, there are significant disparities in literacy rates according to household income, geographical location, ethnicity and gender. For example, in 2020, globally, 90% of men over the age of 15 were defined as “literate”, whereas only 83% of women were so defined (UNESCO 2021a , p. 303). Indeed, women constitute nearly two-thirds of all “illiterate” adults in the world and this share has changed little since the turn of the century. Overall, recent progress in adult literacy, conventionally understood, has been painstakingly slow. It mainly reflects demographic shifts in life expectancy and fertility and higher levels of formal education among younger birth cohorts and only minimal effects of increased access to adult literacy programmes (UNESCO 2015a , pp. 143–144, 2020a , p. 268).

Participation rates in ALE programmes vary greatly around the world (UIL 2019 ). Limited and unverified information on ALE participation rates is available for only 96 UNESCO Member States, entirely based on country self-reports in the survey conducted by the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) for the Fourth Global Report on Adult Learning and Education ( GRALE 4 ). Of these countries, 28 reported adult participation rates below 5%; 24 countries reported participation rates between 5% and 10%; 11 countries reported rates between 11% and 19%; 19 countries reported rates between 20% and 50%; and only 14 countries reported adult participation rates above 50% (ibid.). We have almost no reliable information about ALE participation for the remaining 97 UNESCO Member States.

Undoubtedly, when the international adult education community convenes for CONFINTEA VII in Marrakech, Morocco in June 2022, it will recommit itself to the strengthening and funding of ALE and to boosting participation in ALE programmes, even in the absence of reliable data. It remains to be seen whether the strategies and policies emerging from the conference will also target participation among vulnerable groups – for example, minorities, migrants and refugees; people with disabilities; older adults – who require dedicated systems of financing and other support.

Notwithstanding limited ALE progress in recent decades, its endeavours pale when considered alongside emerging challenges and crises, which are profound in scale and scope. Growing evidence suggests that life on Earth hangs in the balance and ALE must be part of a comprehensive solution. Carefully researched scientific reports present disturbing evidence of the impact of human activities on species extinction, Footnote 6 climate change, Footnote 7 and water scarcity, Footnote 8 which are likely to adversely impact natural ecosystems, animal species and many human populations.

The list of anthropogenic-induced tipping points that are growing nearer or being crossed on our planet is long. Researchers have devised quantitative measures to determine if humanity is operating within the limits of nine boundaries – namely, climate change, ocean acidification, stratospheric ozone depletion, interference with global phosphorus and nitrogen cycles, rate of biodiversity loss, global freshwater use, land system change, aerosol loading, and chemical pollution (Asher 2021 ). At present, we have exceeded four of these boundaries (biodiversity loss, nitrogen cycle, land system change and climate change) and we are on the cusp of exceeding another four – all but the chemical boundary.

Concurrently, language vitality is on the wane: at least 50% of the world’s more than six thousand languages are losing speakers, especially among the young (UNESCO 2003 ). UNESCO estimates that, in most world regions, about 90% of the languages still in use today may be replaced by nationally dominant languages by the end of the 21st century. The endangerment of languages is especially profound among Indigenous peoples, a sign of further denigration of their heritage and knowledge systems (Dei 2002 ).

It is projected that most people on Earth today are likely to experience another extreme pandemic like COVID-19 in their lifetime (Marani et al. 2021 ). WHO’s Coronavirus Dashboard estimates that globally, since the onset of COVID-19, there have been more than half a billion confirmed cases and at least 6.26 million deaths (WHO 2022 ). As the pandemic spread, and communities were placed in lockdowns or restricted movement, main modes of formal and non-formal education either ceased or were disrupted. At its peak, the COVID-19 pandemic forced 194 countries to close their schools, affecting nearly 1.6 billion children and youth (UNESCO 2022 ). At least one in three students were unable to access remote learning (UNICEF 2020 ). In addition to educational disruption and learning loss, school closures massively eroded children’s – and adults’ – sense of routine, heightened their perceptions of fragility, and exacerbated socio-economic and racial inequalities in accessing education, as some were able to continue learning remotely, often by digital means, while many others could not.

Adult literacy and numeracy programmes were also hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. A rapid assessment in mid-2020 suggested that 90% of adult literacy programmes were partially or even fully suspended (UNESCO 2020a ). Moreover, with a few exceptions (e.g. Chad and Senegal), ALE programmes were mostly absent from countries’ initial education response plans to the pandemic (UNESCO 2020b ). Among member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a recent study estimated that pandemic-induced shutdowns of economic activities decreased workers’ participation in non-formal learning by an average of 18%, and in informal learning by 25% (OECD 2021 ).

Can adult education reimagine itself at this critical juncture in human history?

Given the profound and urgent crises facing humanity today, the question is whether the adult education movement can rise to the occasion, mobilise the political will and financial resources, and reimagine its purpose and trajectory in the coming decades. In the aftermath of the Second World War, adult educators faced unimaginable moral, spiritual, economic and political crises and raised the banner of Fundamental Education as an innovative strategy for transforming communities. The current multifaceted crises pose equally daunting – although perhaps less apparent – challenges, so the issue arises once again: Can leaders of today’s adult education community find the wherewithal to raise new banners that address the unprecedented forces impacting our communities and villages, our cities and countries – indeed, the future existence of our planet? Can the adult education movement effectively serve as a bridge for intercultural exchange and reconciliation, and as a platform that brings together actors and agencies with distinctive worldviews and interests to work together in common purpose?

There are certainly signs of a greater recognition of the importance and value of ALE today, though they are far from universal. To list a few: adults are living longer, generating more demand for learning throughout life in diverse settings and formats. New technologies, growing automation and shifting locations of production are influencing the skills needed by, and career trajectories of, workers in evolving labour markets. National populations are growing more diverse, partly due to intensified migration, thus highlighting the role of adult education in promoting nation-building and social solidarity. Many young adults have been leaving formal education due to the impact of higher costs, lower quality and remote instruction and will be looking for new pathways of learning as adults. Growing numbers of refugees and peoples displaced due to armed conflict have increased the need for adult education in emergencies as well as opportunities for (re)training and skill acquisition. Adult education is expected to contribute to greater awareness of climate change and to promote resilience through enhanced knowledge of mitigation and adaptation strategies. The turn away from democracy and the weakening of public support for democratic institutions (Freedom House 2022a , b ) are increasing interest in civic education and global citizenship education for learners of all age brackets. In short, despite persistent impediments, the rationale for governments, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the private sector to invest in adult education could not be stronger and more urgent.

ALE and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

Unlike the past, when the voices of adult educators seeking to transform the world may have been faint echoes in the ears of government leaders, today they can collaborate with numerous governmental and non-governmental actors within a comprehensive international development agenda: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (UN 2015 ). Education and lifelong learning Footnote 9 are understood to be drivers of broad social, political, economic and environmental transformation. The fact that promoting “lifelong learning opportunities for all” (SDG 4; UN 2015 ) has been adopted as an official international development priority is unprecedented.

References to ALE are found throughout the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their respective Targets – sometimes explicitly, often implicitly. In addition to the global goal dedicated to Education (SDG 4), there are numerous direct and indirect references to ALE in the other 16 SDGs (ISCU and ISSC 2015 ). As John Oxenham noted:

Each of the 17 goals has a set of targets and each set has at least one target that deals with or implies learning, training, educating or at the very least raising awareness for one or more groups of adults. Goals 3 [health], 5 [women], 8 [economy], 9 [infrastructure], 12 [consumption] and 13 [climate] especially include targets that imply substantial learning for ranges of adults – and organised, programmatic learning at that (John Oxenham, quoted in Rogers 2016 , p. 29).

Moreover, the lasting impact of education on many SDGs is apparent in two other ways (UNESCO 2016 , p. 368 ff.). First, when SDG Indicators (UIS 2018 ) are disaggregated by education levels, there is often a significant link between more educated adults and various sustainability outcomes, thereby confirming long-standing research findings. Second, progress in the 2030 Agenda depends on whether and how formal and non-formal education builds critical capacity in society. Improvements in health and sanitation services, agricultural productivity, climate change mitigation and crime reduction – to name a few – are contingent on training professionals who can implement policies, lead information campaigns, and communicate with targeted communities. Whether considered non-formal adult education or university-based extension services (Rogers 2016 ), adult education programmes are found in many fields – e.g. health promotion, agriculture, human resource enhancement, environmental management and community development – but there is rarely a co-ordinating idea illuminating the work and purposes of such programmes. Small ALE fiefdoms, under the purview of non-education ministries or non-state actors, often remain unaware of the shared world they occupy (UNESCO 2021a ), and ministries of education have few incentives to accurately reflect the vast and colourful portrait consisting of diverse adult education activities. If ALE is an essential means of capacity building, then the need for such capacities is acute in many under-resourced settings. Effective capacity building through ALE can significantly contribute to SDG progress. And yet, ALE continues to play the role of an “invisible friend” for the SDGs (Benavot 2018 ).

Future visions of ALE and lifelong learning

Until recently, the main foci of the international educational community have been on universal completion of primary education, reduced gender disparities in basic education, enhanced quality education, mainly in terms of increased learning levels, and a growing interest in early childhood care and education. Apart from emanating conventional calls for fostering adult literacy and life skills, the Jomtien and Dakar conferences (UNESCO 1990; WCEFA 2000) had little to say about ALE beyond a recognition of intergenerational or family-based literacy acquisition. The broader opportunity to recognise the secondary benefits of ALE for sustainable development was missed.

In addition to deploying its convening power to bring together governments and other stakeholders in major policy-generating international gatherings, UNESCO has also commissioned over the years four forward-looking reports:

Learning to be: The world of education today and tomorrow (Faure et al. 1972 )

Learning: The treasure within. Report to UNESCO of the International Commission on Education for the 21st Century (Delors et al. 1996 )

Rethinking education: Towards a global common good? (UNESCO 2015b )

Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education (UNESCO 2021b ).

In many ways it is in and through these highly influential reports that the broad value of lifelong education and lifelong learning is fleshed out (see Biesta 2021 ). Arguably, the rationale and groundwork for the inclusion of lifelong learning in the SDGs were laid in the first two reports listed above. Nevertheless, an interesting contradiction has arisen: while members of the international community may embrace the term and sometimes the discourse of lifelong learning, in practice, they often do so in truncated ways – highlighting some aspects (early childhood education or formal education) and downplaying others (adult and non-formal education). Notable exceptions are the European Union (through its adult education targets and monitoring efforts) and the OECD (through skills assessments in its Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies [PIAAC]), which continue to focus on ALE as a critical policy lever – albeit dominated by economic considerations. In addition, there is a small group of countries – for example, Canada, Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea and Singapore – which are deeply committed to implementing lifelong education policies. Footnote 10

It is also noteworthy how ALE and lifelong learning are conceived in these two recent UNESCO reports: Rethinking education (UNESCO 2015b ) and Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education (UNESCO 2021b ). The first report emphasises the humanistic and holistic nature of lifelong learning:

It is necessary … to reassert a humanistic approach to learning throughout life for social, economic and cultural development. Naturally, focus on particular dimensions may shift in different learning settings and at different stages of the life course. But in reaffirming the relevance of lifelong learning as the organizing principle for education, it is critical to integrate the social, economic and cultural dimensions (UNESCO 2015b , pp. 37–38).

The report further underscores the moral and ethical issues raised in and through lifelong learning:

… the concept of humanism has given rise to several, often conflicting, interpretations, each of which raises fundamental moral and ethical issues that are clearly matters of educational concern. It can be argued that sustaining and enhancing the dignity, capacity and welfare of the human person in relation to others, and to nature, should be the fundamental purpose of education in the twenty-first century. The humanistic values that should be the foundations and purpose of education include: respect for life and human dignity, equal rights and social justice, cultural and social diversity , and a sense of human solidarity and shared responsibility for our common future (UNESCO 2015b , p. 38; emphases in original).

The timing of the Reimagining our futures together report (UNESCO 2021b ) – amid a global pandemic, growing international crises, and in the run-up to CONFINTEA VII – means that it too is likely to influence thinking about ALE and lifelong learning in the coming years. The report underscores the transformative potential of ALE and the need to reimagine its purposes beyond economic considerations by forging synergistic connections with other sectors:

Adult learning and education must look very different a generation from now. As our economies and societies change, adult education will need to extend far beyond lifelong learning for labour market purposes. Opportunities for career change and reskilling need to connect to a broader reform of all education systems that emphasizes the creation of multiple, flexible pathways. Like education in all domains, rather than being reactive or adaptive (whether to change in labour markets, technology, or the environment), adult education needs to be reconceptualized around learning that is truly transformative (UNESCO 2021b , pp. 114–115).

The Reimagining our futures together report advocates for a multidimensional view of ALE – empowering, critical and transformative – which takes responsibility for shaping a just, peaceful and sustainable world:

Adult learning and education play multiple roles. It helps people find their way through a range of problems and increases competencies and agency. It enables people to take more responsibility for their future. Furthermore, it helps adults understand and critique changing paradigms and power relationships and take steps towards shaping a just and sustainable world. A futures orientation should define adult education, as much as education at all moments, as an education entangled with life. Adults are responsible for the world in which they live as well as the world of the future. Responsibility to the future cannot be simply passed on to the next generations. A shared ethic of intergenerational solidarity is needed (UNESCO 2021b , p. 115).

Interestingly, these quotations harken back to the broad-based, life-altering FEP agenda initiated many decades ago. They also recognise the distinctive challenges of our times, which again require holistic approaches and energetic thinking that transcend interagency politics and turf wars.

In preparing the Reimagining our futures together report (UNESCO 2021b ), UNESCO commissioned dozens of background papers, a handful of which focus on the future of ALE and lifelong learning. For example, in “Knowledge production, access and governance: A song from the South”, Catherine Odora Hoppers ( 2020 ) argues for expanding our understanding of education itself, from a narrow view of school-based learning, to one that embraces non-formal adult education, and then expands holistically into lifelong learning. Others note the challenges facing the adult education community if it is to meet a surging and diversified demand for ALE in the coming years. While noting the importance of contextualising solutions, the International Council for Adult Education (ICAE), an international civil society organisation, calls for:

strengthening institutional structures (like community learning centres for delivering ALE) and securing the role of ALE staff,

improving in-service and pre-service education, further education, training, capacity building and employment conditions of adult educators, [and]

developing appropriate content/curricula and modes of delivery adequate for adult learners, based on research results (ICAE 2020 , p. 13).

Africa: education as a source of restoration

Although many current crises are global in scope, they impact world regions differently and often unequally. Here, we briefly focus on Africa, given its centrality in international education development discourse as well as its potential to be a thought leader in reimagining education and lifelong learning going forward.

In the African context, relationships with, and to, nature, human agency, and human solidarity underpin African knowledge systems. African communities create and derive their existence from them. Relationships between people hold pride of place – best explained by the concept of ubuntu (Oviawe 2016 ). It does not seek to conquer or debilitate nature as a first impulse.

Thus, from an African perspective, education must first and foremost facilitate restoration. This means employing education and social literacies (Street 1995 ) to build pathways of return for the empowerment of African children and adults – in other words, to foster a sense of coming home. There need to be concerted efforts to restore human agency among Africans. From an epistemological point of view, the objective is to enable African civilisations to be recovered, breathing life to Indigenous forms of knowledge and restoring their place in the livelihood of communities so that they can, without coercion, determine the nature and pace of the development they seek going forward (Ocitti 1994 ). Thus, the right to adult literacy and the achievement of universal literacy are not only important for personal fulfilment, enhanced skill levels and social development, but also as a source for restoration and renewal.

It is estimated that about sixty per cent of Africans live in rural areas (UN 2018 ). They use their bequeathed rural assets as the basis for establishing a livelihood, securing their existence, contributing to different modes of development, subsidising state social welfare, and caring for the old and the young. An appropriate strategy for adult education is to frame sustainable development around what people currently have and, from this vantage point, re-link lifelong learning with humanity from the ground up. This means systematising and integrating diverse social and non-Western knowledge systems into mainstream processes.

Education systems in Africa continue to be deeply rooted in Western values and cultural frames as a vestige of colonialism. They also narrowly attend to the supply side of the equation, obsessively focused on instrumental policies to increase attendance and school completion rates. Education needs to anticipate a liberation of the mainstream from its narrow, parochial, and eschewed understanding of what is “universal”. To do so would mean recognising the dissonance in the application of dialogue in the Freirean sense of “naming the world” (Freire 1970 ), and the under-articulation of strategies that enable the effective participation of African knowledge systems in this naming.

Which “life skills” should be realised through lifelong learning?

For education and lifelong learning to truly become authentic pathways to sustainable development, empowerment and restoration, they must go beyond the articulation of new visions for the future, and deal sensitively with the consequences of inherited practices. Continued focus on socialising children and adults into dominant cultural milieus or on adapting the provision of formal and non-formal education to existing economic structures to ease the school-to-work transition contributes little to a new vision of lifelong learning.

One potential point of departure is recasting the value of different “life skills” and competencies that adults acquire through ALE in consideration of an alternative set of societal purposes. At the World Education Forum in Dakar in May 2000, countries committed themselves to a broad “life skills” goal: to ensure “that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life skills programmes” (EFA Goal 3; WEF 2000 , p. 16). Although various international organisations and civil society groups held different understandings of this goal, some consensus did eventually emerge: (1) that “equitable access to appropriate learning” included all modes of delivery, i.e. formal and nonformal education, vocational training, distance education, on-the-job training and self-learning; and (2) that life skills programmes could be characterised by the major types of skills they conveyed – namely, basic skills (e.g. literacy, numeracy), practical/contextual skills (e.g. health promotion, HIV prevention, livelihood and income-generation skills) and psychosocial skills (e.g. problem-solving, decision-making, critical thinking, interpersonal, communication, negotiating and collaboration/teamwork skills). Although EFA Goal 3 was, unsurprisingly, one of the most difficult goals to measure or monitor, it did embrace a broad view of the learning needs of younger and older learners (UNESCO 2014a , 2015a ).

The post-2015 global education policy agenda (SDG 4) contains more specific formulations of adult learning needs, albeit in separate targets (WEF 2016 ). SDG Target 4.3 focuses on equitable access to affordable and quality TVET and higher education; SDG Target 4.4 on relevant skills for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship; SDG Target 4.5 on eliminating discrimination and disparities in all forms of education; SDG Target 4.6 on youth and adult literacy and numeracy; and SDG Target 4.7 on knowledge and skills needed for sustainable development through education for sustainability and global citizenship. Footnote 11

While the SDG Targets invoke a wide array of skills and competencies, they mainly refer to economic productivity, social equality and sustainable development. But which transversal skills and competencies are needed to grapple with the imperatives of peaceful co-existence, social solidarity, global awareness and human dignity, which appear to be in short supply? For example, understanding human dignity and working towards its revitalisation presupposes an awareness of humiliation, deprivation, cognitive justice and other forms of disenfranchisement. In today’s world, commitments to democratic institutions and processes and securing human rights, taken on their own, are insufficient to ensure human dignity. While SDG Target 4.7 offers a handle for ALE programmes to diversify the competencies they seek to engender, most efforts around this target are exclusively focused on school-based learning. Can lifelong learning opportunities be designed to address emergent societal and global challenges? As we have seen, the stakes today are much higher than in the past.

Future educational trajectories, based on lifelong learning for all, must look with the eyes of a chameleon, taking a full 360-degree view, to embrace humanity where it stands and build upon what people have, instead of reinforcing the deficit-oriented and toxic formula that has been endemic to borrowed educational practices for so long. Lifelong learning is about learning throughout life in formal, non-formal and informal settings. And yet, more often than not, informal and non-formal approaches to learning are undervalued, mentioned in passing, and largely invisible. Why do so many advocates of lifelong learning turn to the safely tarmacked highways of formal learning? Non-formal and informal learning may require different measurement tools, but they are ubiquitous in people’s lives and deserve our full attention.

Shifting from education with a small “e” to Education with a capital “E”

For many, the term “lifelong learning” has a wider and a narrower meaning. In its wider meaning, lifelong learning refers to all forms of formal, non-formal and informal learning – irrespective of whether it is planned or unplanned, intentional or unintentional – involving children, youth and adults. In a narrower sense, lifelong learning refers to planned learning activities , including those both inside and outside of education and community institutions (e.g. workplace learning and private-sector provision) for specific populations (e.g. toddlers, adults). In the first sense, no one is a non-participant; everyone learns, even if the learning is unconscious and unintentional. In the second sense, there are some adults for whom it can be claimed that they “have done no ‘learning’ since leaving school”. Thus, “lifelong learning” policies seek to ensure that more and more adults participate in learning opportunities over the course of their lives (Rogers 2016 ).

Lifelong learning, in principle, does not discriminate between culturally distinct traditions in education. As Odora Hoppers ( 2020 ) argues, education with a small “e” is tied up with Eurocentrism, and a long tradition of school-centric and discipline-based ways of thinking that create artificial boundaries and barriers, leading to rigid outcomes, international league tables and limited interest in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary learning. By contrast, Education with a capital “E” refers to lifelong relearning, and unlearning, combining formal, informal and non-formal insights and wisdom from many cultures. It embraces traditional knowledge, Indigenous knowledge, civilisational knowledge systems from all parts of the world (Odora Hoppers 2020 ).

For Education with a capital “E” to take root and blossom, a dialogic context must be created in which the democratic imagination and conversation are constructed between different knowledge systems and across diverse disciplines and sectors (UNESCO 2000b ). Such a context would raise issues about governance, science and education and address questions of global ethics, learning and plurality (Bindé 2001 , 2004 ). This could result in a new governance model of local–global interfaces, focusing on issues of restoration, sustainability and increased human consciousness as well as self-cultivation and self-improvement. Such new governance should be underpinned by a lived ethics, instead of the conceptual compliance-driven ethics that are commonplace today. Current frameworks of governance fetishise information over knowledge as an ecology. This must change. The epistemics of governance of education with a capital “E” must be worked out in terms of a new vocabulary to replace the present model of governance which is puritanical and quite un-nuanced about the suffering it creates (Odora Hoppers 2018 ).

To facilitate the shift to “Education”, emergent knowledge systems need to learn from and validate one another in future pursuits. Indigenous ways of living and knowing open up learners to the crucial distinction between “frugal subsistence” and “poverty” (Gupta 1999 ). Education should produce leaders who look beyond the “classroom” and its world of objects, categories and restrictive logic and foster a wider understanding of science, history, technologies and cultural sciences as practised by other knowledge systems.

Lastly, lifelong learning should seek to create “ethical spaces” that allow individuals from different knowledge traditions to engage in interactions based on dialogue, reciprocity, respect, courtesy, valorisation and recognition of the “Other”. Such spaces open windows of opportunity for critical conversations about race, gender, class, freedom and community. It is in and through ethical spaces that substantial, sustained and deeper understandings between cultures and peoples can emerge. When two sorts of entities with two sorts of intentions meet in an abstract theoretical location in the thought world, it becomes a space where different cultures, worldviews, knowledge systems and jurisdictions agree to interact. Non-Indigenous and Indigenous communities can come and participate, debate, discuss and finally have meaningful dialogue. Instead of maintaining unequal relations in terms of a hierarchical order, a space is created in which both entities experience vulnerability – in other words, they meet on equal terms, naked, without agendas or titles. Ethical spaces create a level playing field with opportunities for dialogue between entities and for the possible crossing of existing cultural borders (Ermine 2007 ).

Can lifelong learning reimagine itself as the purveyor of emancipatory platforms (Biesta 2012 )? Can it enable individuals to engage with distinctive knowledge traditions and with decolonised, alternate forms of knowing of, and being in, the world? If so, then it will help to address the crises of our times.

The articles featured in this special issue

The six articles we present in this special issue reflect opportunities and gaps in ALE and lifelong learning in the broad SDG agenda and how these might be bridged to bring forth more meaningful social transformation as discussed thus far. This compilation therefore highlights a range of strategies for creating abundant, fair, accessible, diverse and monitorable pathways and equivalencies both within and between formal, non-formal and informal learning. It also addresses the need to better align the links between ALE policy, governance, financing, quality and participation, the five key areas of the Belém Framework for Action (BFA; UIL 2010 ), and the five ALE-related Targets of SDG 4 (WEF 2016 ). Overall, this special issue aims to rethink and re-position ALE, the core construct of the CONFINTEA process of reviewing and improving, within the conception of lifelong learning in the SDGs as a key lever for development and addressing global challenges touched on earlier. In this respect it also complements forthcoming reports and papers being prepared for the CONFINTEA VII conference, including the Fifth Global Report on Adult Learning and Education ( GRALE 5 ) which will focus on education for active citizenship (UIL 2022 ).

This special issue aims to bring the agendas of CONFINTEA and the SDGs closer together. Much of the success of each respective agenda depends on mobilising funding to implement policy commitments. This is especially true for ALE, an education policy arena in which financing is far more precarious.

We begin with an article by David Archer , who was a member of the BFA Drafting Group in 2009, representing civil society through the International Council for Adult Education (ICAE), and is a key expert on education financing within ActionAid. His article, “Avoiding pitfalls in the next International Conference on Adult Education (CONFINTEA): Lessons on financing adult education from Belém”, is an interesting first-hand account from someone who was deeply engaged in the discussion and drafting ideas of how big the education part in a country’s overall national budget should be, and what the share of ALE of the national education budget should be moving towards by asking for concrete figures and percentages. He specifically points to the interventions of delegates who argued for no figure or percentage to be put into the BFA, and that they unfortunately succeeded on that point. This may have contributed to the reality of today where each GRALE points to the low level of ALE financing in most countries. Archer shares those insights in detail and offers a number of potential solutions, looking beyond education into progressive ways of tax reform or debt service suspension. It is to be hoped that key lessons have been learned and the outcome document of CONFINTEA VII, the Marrakech Framework for Action (MFA), will be more explicit in terms of financing goals. The currently available draft for the online MFA consultation formulates financing as follows:

We are determined to increase public spending on education in accordance with country contexts to meet the international benchmarks of allocating 4–6% of GDP and/or 15–20% of total public expenditure to education, including at least 4% for ALE (CONFINTEA VII online consultation, accessed 10 April 2022).

The second article we present, “Financing adult learning and education (ALE) now and in future” was written by Idowu Biao , professor of lifelong learning at the University of Abomey-Calavi in Benin. He throws the net wider in helping to understand why ALE is grossly underfunded while the education community is pushing lifelong learning for all as stipulated in SDG 4. Biao starts off by talking about ALE as a human right, arguing that there is no good reason why ALE is not funded like other parts of a country’s education system. He identifies four factors which he deems responsible for this current state of affairs: (1) the world’s obsession with the provision of school education; (2) the lack of adequate instruments to work out ALE’s returns on investment; (3) the delusion that employers will ultimately supply ALE, a hope which disregards the fact that a large proportion of youth and adults are not in formal employment; and (4) the assumption that an expansion of formal schooling will eventually lead to the establishment of literate societies free of intergenerational crises. Since ALE is generally framed as a broad literacy education project, Biao undertakes a review of literacy education costing. He continues by looking into several funding models in which individuals, communities, governments, or employers play a key role at the national level, and also considers the use of international development aid or the Official Development Assistance (ODA) model. Both are needed: the increase in domestic funding for ALE as well as new perspectives of funding ALE within lifelong learning for global agencies, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, as well as large NGOs, whose ALE funding is minimal.

Adult literacy

Adult literacy is also of particular interest to Ulrike Hanemann and Clinton Robinson , both of whom are influential in this area through their work for UNESCO and in the field. In “Rethinking literacy from a lifelong learning perspective in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals and the International Conference on Adult Education”, they raise concerns about the challenges of connecting literacy to the principle of lifelong learning, focusing in particular on SDG Target 4.6, which is dedicated to adult literacy. The authors use a holistic framework labelled “lifelong literacy” not only to strengthen global approaches to adult literacy – which they consider insufficiently prioritised in recent years – but also to inform policy and programme approaches that better link country, institution-based, community, family and individual learning. This integration, they argue, is necessary when considering literacy as a socially situated practice. Hanemann and Robinson also provide analyses of literacy policies, strategies and programmes that have been successful in adopting a lifelong learning approach, drawing out some important lessons on how this can be achieved. In particular, they argue, more attention needs to be paid to the demand side of a literate environment and to motivation, enabling continuity of learning by making literacy part of people’s broader learning purposes. The authors make a number of points that support the framing of adult literacy in this way, noting that learning begets learning and therefore motivation is highly implicit in this process if learning opportunities actively relate to the realities, aspirations and learning journeys of adults in different social contexts (i.e. matching learners’ language needs and local forms of knowledge). As such, education systems must make their inclusion more flexible and permeable through the creation of responsive infrastructure, also, for example, by broadening national qualifications frameworks to include literacy and basic skills gained in non-formal and informal learning environments, raising the value of recognition, validation and accreditation (RVA) of these learning outcomes as a basis of learning continuity for all. To contribute to the ongoing discussion on reframing literacy from a lifelong learning perspective in the context of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the potential development of a new “framework for action” during CONFINTEA VII, this article offers three fundamental considerations that should inform policy and strategic planning regarding conceptual orientation, programmatic responses and institutional connections.

Participation

After considering financing and literacy, we now turn to participation. GRALE 4, Entitled Leave no one behind: participation, equity and inclusion (UIL 2019 ) makes the claim in its concluding chapter that the global monitoring architecture in place is not adequately equipped to fulfil its purpose, and that country-level collection of ALE data is far from sufficient. Who participates in ALE, and who does not, in what forms and at what levels is hardly known. Aggregated data reflecting age and gender, access and inclusion, demand and supply, digital or institutionalised provision are limited.

The fourth article we present in this special issue is “Community learning centres (CLCs) for adult learning and education (ALE): Development in and by communities”, written by Sonja Belete, Chris Duke, Heribert Hinzen, Angela Owusu-Boampong and Khấu Hữu Phước. Aiming to get a clearer understanding of participation in community-based ALE, often conducted in community learning centres (CLCs), their article shows that institutionalised forms of ALE are found in most parts of the world. They are embedded in different traditions, with stronger roots in Europe and Asia, and as spaces offering opportunities for literacy and skills training, health and citizenship promotion, general, liberal and vocational education, in line with a fuller recognition of the meaning of lifelong learning, and in the context of local communities. They operate according to a multitude of modes, methods and materials, and often form the basis for even more informal and participatory learning, like study circles and community groups. The authors review relevant literature and identify recent studies and experiences with a particular focus on the Asia-Pacific and Africa regions, but also consider insights related to interventions at the global level. Findings point to low levels of participation of adults in general, and more specifically of vulnerable and excluded groups struggling to overcome various barriers. The authors’ discussion is guided by the question: What conditions are conducive to having more and better ALE for lifelong learning – and which roles can CLCs and other community-based ALE institutions play? They take into consideration that while most learners in CLCs are adults, sometimes children and youth also participate. As institutions, CLCs provide opportunities for engagement in different thematic areas through courses and other activities. To strengthen policy support for good practice, convincing examples of successful methods and related policies, legislation and financing are needed, along with a much deeper shared grasp of the full meaning of lifelong learning (throughout life, in depth, and including a wide range of locations and modes of learning). This discussion is timely – the authors argue that CLCs need to be given more attention in international commitments such as those made in the context of the series of CONFINTEAs and the UN’s 17 SDGs. Indeed, CLCs are up for discussion in a thematic workshop during CONFINTEA VII, and also featured in a recommendation in the draft MFA – both of which will take CLCs deeper into the proceedings and hopefully outcomes.

Two articles in this special issue focus on how monitoring ALE against international commitments can be improved in different ways, both to enhance scope, collaboration, reliability and usability of data findings and conclusions, but also to provide evidence for foundational arguments of ALE benefits, spill-over effects and financing needs. In the first of these two contributions, Ellen Boeren and Kjell Rubenson , both academics who have been involved in several GRALE reports, take a close look at its utility as a monitoring mechanism. In “The Global Report on Adult Learning and Education (GRALE) : Strengths, weaknesses and future directions”, they use an evaluative framework developed by Pär Mårtensson et al. ( 2016 ) to investigate to what extent the GRALE approach to monitoring and reporting on ALE so far has been (1) credible (e.g. based on rigorous research methodologies and methods); (2) contributory (e.g. relevant and applicable to practice, generalisable); (3) communicable (e.g. accessible, understandable and readable in terms of report structure); and (4) conforming (e.g. with ethical standards). The authors arrive at several critical observations, such as concerns over GRALE data quality, given that the mechanism only relies on one response per country rather than triangulating information sources for a more impartial view of ALE activities on the ground. Another is on how countries with dramatically different ALE contexts are analysed in groups (by region, income level), potentially making it difficult for policymakers to distil specific learnings for their national settings and also challenging to see particular gaps or issues, aside from those reported through open-ended questions. While GRALE provides a unique dataset from regularly (at roughly three-year intervals) tracking progress on political commitments to the BFA and RALE across a wide swathe of UNESCO Member States, it is unclear what direct impact its insights and findings have had on ALE policy, strategy and programme developments over the past 13 years. This creates a nebulous space for supposition about impact, rather than having evidence of impact in various settings that underwrites and ultimately strengthens GRALE ’s concrete value in shaping ALE directions and driving social norms. To get to the bottom of this question, Boeren and Rubenson suggest an in-depth impact evaluation to be conducted during the next CONFINTEA cycle, in addition to GRALE focusing more on tracking not only progress but also impacts from meeting ALE commitments and linking this query to the SDGs.

The second article on monitoring, “Bringing together monitoring approaches to track progress on adult learning and education across main international policy tools”, was written by Ashley Stepanek Lockhart , who has also been involved in GRALE. She explores ways of leveraging the report and monitoring strategies of ALE-related SDG 4 Targets (4.1–4.7) and “means of implementation” (4.a–4.c) to increase coverage and efficiency of these processes by combining efforts from within different parts of UNESCO, while also maintaining their separate added value. This is important since, at least in theory, different UNESCO institutes and departments are talking to the same countries about ALE monitoring even if the approach, timeline and type of information collected may differ. While there are content overlaps, Stepanek Lockhart argues that aligning GRALE and monitoring strategies of ALE-related SDG 4 Targets/means of implementation could help to backstop information that each requires for sharper or more comprehensive analysis, whether to fill gaps on missing data or to verify data in hand, with the aim of increasing robustness and reliability of resulting reports. She provides examples of where data may be missing in one monitoring approach and how a question could be added to another to make up the difference, and vice versa (e.g. adding a question to the GRALE survey to build on limited information about SDG Indicator 4.3.1 on participation in informal and non-formal education in training in the last 12 months, by sex; conversely, sharing data with GRALE on SDG Indicator 4.4.1 on youth and adults with ICT skills, by skill type, to enhance analysis). Moreover, demonstrating that there are significant gaps between relevant targets, indicators and data sources, the author argues that mutually beneficial activities and information sharing could contribute to monitoring the fuller intent of SDG 4 Targets concerning ALE, which may overlap with commitments made in the BFA and in the 2015 Recommendation for Adult Learning and Education (RALE; UNESCO & UIL 2016 ). Among other recommendations, the author highlights the need for GRALE to enlarge its focus on tracking ALE teacher development, since – while SDG Target/means of implementation 4.c focuses on increasing the supply of qualified teachers generally, and especially in economically developing countries – in practice they are otherwise not being monitored.

This introductory essay and the articles in this special issue constitute a clarion call for meeting the unprecedented challenges of our times by reimagining the roles of adult education and lifelong learning for all. Collectively, we consider abstract conceptualisations as well as concrete experiences. We draw on the historical record as well as on insights from adjacent fields of knowledge. From an African perspective, we reconsider the vast education project – formal, non-formal and informal – through a different lens. It prioritises education that serves as a platform for bridging diverse worldviews, cultivating encounters with the Other, and recognising, publicly and without duress, the co-existence of multiple forms of knowledge. Education that transforms must be holistic. Adult education that transforms must acknowledge different knowledge systems, including Indigenous ways of knowing and being, which have been neglected and devalorised. Working towards these ideals is among the deepest challenges for the ALE movement going forward.

Recommendations for the future of adult learning and education

On the relevance, contextualisation and interactive potential of ale.

Adult learning and education should be firmly embedded in local contexts of culture and language, and derive its purposes, major content areas and pedagogies from local communities regardless of location (i.e. rural, urban, mixed landscapes).

ALE programmes should encourage learners to encounter different knowledge and historical traditions and to engage in interactions based on dialogue, reciprocity, courtesy and mutual respect.

Indigenous knowledge and local learning practices are important for people to navigate their specific contexts and aspirations. Creating physical, emotional and intellectual spaces in support of these processes should be encouraged.

On institutionalising, professionalising and governing ALE

Countries should formally acknowledge that the right to education for all includes the right to adult education for all.

ALE systems should be an acknowledged sub-sector of a country’s education system (like primary, secondary and higher education) to more fully reflect and act on long-term political and financial commitments in this field.

Steps should be taken to enhance the provision of, and participation in, ALE within clearly demarcated spaces supported by an explicit infrastructure, one that facilitates local engagement. Community learning centres, for example, and other community-based institutions can be developed as cornerstones to local infrastructure.

The governance of a country’s education system should be redesigned to take full account of all sub-sectors from a lifelong learning perspective, including formal and non-formal education and informal learning. Policy decisions should draw on documented evidence of the flexible and permeable pathways adults utilise in their lives, which can be recognised and broadened to support a variety of learning journeys. Mechanisms and support structures should prioritise adults living and working in the informal and agricultural sectors, ensuring that no one is left behind.

The institutionalisation and professionalisation of ALE are important for organisational development as well as capacity building, training and research to enhance quality. Drawing on evidence of best practices, higher education institutions should play a supportive role in preparing ALE professionals, who serve in leadership, management, administration, teaching and research capacities in the ALE sub-sector. The research functions of universities and specialised institutions should be mobilised to improve all aspects of ALE systems, especially in terms of quality, diversity and equity through a lifelong learning approach.

On financing

ALE financing should be fully embedded and concretised in policy and legislation and move beyond well-intentioned political commitments. Without an urgent increase in financing, the potential role of ALE to respond to the major crises of our time will go under/unrealised.

All countries should widen the tax base by ending harmful tax incentives and preventing tax evasion and use these funds to increase the share of existing government budgets allocated to ALE.

Many countries should increase their tax to GDP ratios – say, by five percentage points by 2030 – to raise more financial resources for all forms of lifelong learning: formal, non-formal and informal.

Increased budget allocations to ALE should prioritise excluded groups, improve equity of provision and increase the scrutiny of spending in practice to make sure ALE resources reach disadvantaged communities.

International donors should support partner countries’ efforts to increase ALE funding levels by meeting their commitment to 0.7% of Gross National Income and thereby ensure equitable resource allocation to underserved communities.

On measuring, reporting and monitoring

Countries – with the support of international partners and agencies – should make concerted efforts to expand the collection and reporting of ALE-related information and statistics based on national census data, other national surveys and innovative indicators, thereby contributing to improvements in national reporting and global reviews of ALE and, ultimately, improved implementation.

Steps should be taken to upgrade the reliability and validity of information about the participation in and provision of ALE in all its forms and modalities, regardless of who the provider is (e.g. government agencies, or private-sector, civil-society, faith-based or distance learning organisations).

Information on other aspects of ALE (e.g. ALE programme descriptions, learner characteristics, programme quality, funding, educators and facilitators, outcomes, programme effectiveness and efficiency) should also be compiled. Such information should be utilised for improved policy deliberation, policy interventions, advocacy, the institutionalisation and professionalisation of ALE, as well as for evaluation research and innovation in the field. ALE data should become an integral and transparent part of overall education statistics and monitoring systems, and should help create a more robust evidence base for GRALE monitoring.

Countries should measure adult literacy based on a continuum of literacy levels (not dichotomised into literate and illiterate categories) and define clear measurable ALE targets within lifelong learning. Approaches to measuring literacy as a continuum at scale must be explored to ensure the quality and coverage of interventions in different places without becoming rigid or too prescriptive.

The Global Report on Adult Learning Education ( GRALE ) should be strengthened, and its independence enhanced. GRALE reports should be externally evaluated by an independent entity to determine its impact and fitness for purpose. The terms of reference for the evaluation should be developed by an independent body of diverse stakeholders. This evaluation could be the launch pad for a global research programme into ALE.

Greater synergies should be realised between GRALE and SDG 4 measurement and monitoring efforts, positioning al ALE as an integral part of the overall effort to support transformative lifelong learning and development.

The fact that the major parties to the conflict included the most educated and literate populations in the world did not detract from the abiding faith of post-WWII leaders that the spread of education and literacy would promote international understanding and peaceful relations.

These quotes are taken from the Memorandum on the education programme of UNESCO, Paper No. 1, prepared by the Education Staff of the Preparatory Commission, 13 May 1946. UNESCO.Prep.Com./Educ.Com., UNESCO Archives.

See also Educación Fundamental: Ideario, principios, orientaciones methodológicas (CREFAL 1952 ).

Internally, UNESCO delegates debated the use of the term “fundamental” in contrast to “elementary” or “primary”. Many preferred the former over the others since, for example, it “contained the more recent and much broader concept of education” or because it “conveyed more clearly the conception of basic education which was the right of everyone” or that it was “a new and modern concept … particularly well adapted to countries where adult education became imperative for those persons who had not enjoyed the opportunities of grade-school instruction” (UNESCO 2000a , p. 98). In explaining the choice of terms, Kuo Yu-Shou, Senior Counsellor for Education, claimed that the term “fundamental education” could include education for adults and children. Most importantly, this term suggested that teachers could accept the differences among individuals, while the term “mass education” implied teachers should treat everyone in the same manner (Watras 2010 , p. 221).

This was an insight from the aftermath of the massively disruptive First World War. In 1919, Imperial Germany had moved with deliberate speed towards establishing a democratic polity. The new Constitution of the Weimar Republic contained a special clause requesting local, regional and national authorities to support adult education, including the folk high schools. Despite further disruption (and misappropriation) during the Second World War, it was this constitutional anchoring of ALE in policy, legislation and financing which enabled the German adult education system to flourish for more than a century. The parallel with the evolution of the international adult education movement is striking (Hinzen and Meilhammer 2022 ).

As of the end of 2019, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a global authority on the status of the natural world, included assessments for 112,432 species (a small proportion of all species), of which 30,178 (or 27%) have been found to be threatened with extinction (IUCN 2020 ). The IUCN’s Red list of threatened species currently estimates that 41% of amphibians, 26% of mammals, 13% of birds and 21% of reptiles are threatened with extinction (IUCN 2022 ).

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that human activities are estimated to have caused approximately 1.0°C of global warming above pre-industrial levels (IPCC 2022 ). If global warming continues to increase at the current rate, it is likely to reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052. Warming from human-caused emissions from the pre-industrial period to the present will persist for centuries to millennia and will continue to cause further long-term changes in the climate system, such as arctic cap melting, rising sea levels, extreme weather events, many with adverse impacts on natural, animal and human species.

The UN Convention to Combat Desertification estimates that over one-third of the world’s population currently lives in water-scarce regions (UNCCD 2022 ). By 2030, up to 700 million people could be displaced by drought. “By 2050, over half of the world’s population and half of global grain production will be exposed to severe water scarcity” (ibid., p. 41).

Lifelong learning comprises all learning activities, from cradle to retirement and beyond, undertaken with the aim of improving knowledge, skills and competencies, within personal, civic, social and employment-related perspectives (UIL 2016 ). In much of the world, individuals are engaged in a multiplicity of learning activities – formal, non-formal and informal – throughout their lives, following diverse – and often discontinuous – learning pathways. While it may be difficult to capture empirically how learners of various ages traverse different learning entry and re-entry points, the fluidity of learning profiles has increasingly become the norm.

For Japan, see Centre for Public Impact ( 2018 ).

It is noteworthy that an earlier version of SDG Target 4.7, which was adopted during the Global EFA Meeting in May 2014 in Muscat, Oman, included learning outcomes beyond knowledge and skills. The Muscat Agreement (UNESCO 2014b ) adopted “Global Target 5”, which stated: “By 2030, all learners acquire knowledge, skills, values and attitudes to establish sustainable and peaceful societies, including through global citizenship and education for sustainable development” (ibid., p. 3). Had these social and emotional skills subsequently been included in SDG Target 4.7, it would have contributed to the legitimacy of non-cognitive learning outcomes in, for example, climate change education, human rights education and global citizenship education. The Education 2030 Framework for Action sought to rectify this issue (WEF 2016 , p. 49)

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Acknowledgements

The Editors wish to thank Zvi Bekerman, Jean Bernard, Sergio Cardenas, Maren Elfert, Timothy Ireland, Maria Khan, Katarina Popovic, Clinton Robinson, Un Shil Choi, Margaret Sinclair, Andy Smart, Noah Sobe, Alan Tuckett and Dayong Yuan for their thoughtful comments on an earlier version of this Introduction.

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Benavot, A., Hoppers, C.O., Lockhart, A.S. et al. Reimagining adult education and lifelong learning for all: Historical and critical perspectives. Int Rev Educ 68 , 165–194 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-022-09955-9

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Background:

The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed a major shift in learning realities both in the formal and non-formal education sectors. Countries around the world had to adapt new approaches to teaching and learning. Previously, distance and online learning used to be seen as an asset for complementary education ensuring inclusiveness or continuous training at the higher-level education. In the course of only the year of 2020, it has become compulsory at schools, universities, and in the development sector – being the only opportunity to reach vulnerable groups of population with training and activities aimed at mitigating the consequences of the pandemic.

Given the challenge of the rapid shift to distance and online learning both teachers and students have struggled in terms of digital skills and competencies required to move to online education that offers quality and leaves no-one behind. Furthermore, the various levels of existing digital infrastructure in different countries expose additional challenges for its application. Despite all the challenges one has to recognise that the role and development of distance and online learning has seen major boosts in accessibility and quality in certain contexts within the year. It shall only gain in importance in the years to come as it opens up some great opportunities in terms of diversity, inclusion and accessibility.

The Virtual Conference will elaborate and foster exchange on the “Development and role of online distance learning resources in the professionalization of ALE practitioners and in particular self-managed learning in ALE”. The virtual event will present some best practices of online learning products from Europe and Asia aimed at reaching out to particular groups of the population. Special attention will also be drawn to building the capacities of adult educators to both take on the challenge of organising online learning offers and raise their methodological skills as trainers for adults.

The concluding panel will discuss pathways towards raised digital capacities and innovative formats for and by adult educators in the global context, inviting established ALE-experts to elaborate and exchange views on relevant topics to be considered and to answer questions from the audience.

The Virtual Conference is a part of the Global Adult Education and Development project “Development of digital tools for further development of the Curriculum GlobALE (CG) ”, which aims at further developing CG through the elaboration and introduction of digital resources (video lectures, instructions and other media resources) for each module that provide further input on and guidance through important topics of the programme modules. The project will use the platform of the Virtual Conference to present the project’s results and some of the digital outputs created.

Date: 1 st December 2020

Total duration: 3,5 hours

Admission to the Conference will be open and free . Expected participants will be ALE trainers, providers of capacity-building formats (including CG trainers), supporters of professionalization of ALE practitioners / trainers (UNESCO, DVV International, PRIA, ASPBAE, EAEA, etc.).

This online event will be held in English language. 

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Project design in adult learning 2024

How can we design projects and activities that support our organisations’ challenges in a forward-looking and sustainable perspective? How can we ensure that the innovative methods that we pilot in projects are, on one hand, responding to the main priorities identified at the European and national levels, while also resulting in long-term improvements in our services and communities?

In this training, we will tackle the core processes that support designing successful, sustainable and impactful initiatives in the field of adult education, to tackle our long-term goals while also aligning with the main requirements of broader priorities and funding programmes. We will explore together effective techniques to analyse contextual needs, on the one hand, and existing funding schema, on the other, and to define project requirements to build a bridge into meaningful actions. We also work together, in small groups, to develop challenge-based demo proposals, from concept to work plan, based on existing funding schema, also looking at good practices on more technical aspects, such as budgeting, tasks design and dissemination.

The training will target staff developing EU project applications in the area of adult learning and education. While the main focus of the training will be on Erasmus+ KA2 project applications, the exercises used can also support participants in preparing applications for projects with other funding sources.

Practical information

• Dates: 15-18 January 2024
• Venue: Brussels, Belgium
• Registration period: 20 September – 30 November 2023. Please note that registrations will be evaluated on a rolling basis so we encourage you to register early.

Training fee:

• EAEA member organisations, adult learners and university students: 350 EUR
• NGOs: 400 EUR
• for profit organisations and public institutions: 500 EUR.

Please note that the programme might undergo minor changes.

Monday, 15 January: Setting the scene

Morning: arrival of participants 13:30 – 14:00: Welcome with coffee

14:00 – 15:30: Getting to know each other and EAEA, practical information about the training Introduction of trainers and workshop structure, ice-breaking activity between participants, general information and logistics

15:30 – 17:00: What is adult education in our countries, and why do we need project funding to support it? Guided exchange of experiences between participants. Description: Discussion about the key roles of adult education in the countries of the participants and their personal experience with the use of European project funding

Tuesday, 16 January: Understanding ALE policy and funding

09:00 – 09:30: Welcome with coffee

09:30 – 10:00: Check-in: getting started Recap of the first day and introduction to the second day of the training

10:00 – 11:30: Policy matters! Adult learning policy landscape in Europe and beyond. Presentation and discussion Introduction to the main trends and policies in the field of adult education in Europe, priorities of the European funding available to support the uptake of such policies.

11:30 – 12:00: Coffee break

12:00 – 13:00: Understanding policy-making for policy impact. Interactive practice Workshop activity on policy analysis to identify priorities relevant to our work in adult learning and education

13:00 – 14:00: Lunch break

14:00 – 14:30: Project design pills: analysing funding schema. Presentation Short, tips-like presentation on how to analyse funding programmes and their priorities

14:30 – 16:00: Understanding funding and priorities: the Erasmus+ Programme. Interactive practice Workshop activity on analysis of funding programmes and priorities, to understand and identify the ones relevant for our work and for potential proposals.

16:00 – 17:00: Check-out: self-reflection practice Day wrapping and self and group reflection activity on the practices and main take aways.

Wednesday 17 January: From priorities to project concept

09:30 – 10:00: Check-in: getting started Quick recap of the main take aways from the previous day, introduction to the third day of the training

10:00 – 11:30: My project idea. Ideation and role playing session Participants work in small groups to co-create an idea for a project.

12:00 – 12:45: Pitch the idea! Simulation session. Participants are engaged in a simulation to find partners for their project in a networking session.

12:45 – 13:00: Project design pills: finding partners. Short and tips-like presentation on effective ways to network and find relevant partners

14:00 – 14:45: From idea to project: workplan and budget. Challenge-based activity Group work to encourage participants to work on a more detailed project concept based on a specific challenge.

14:45 – 15:00: Project design pills: work planning and budgeting. Short and tips-like presentation on well designed workplan and related budgets

15:00 – 16:00: From idea to project proposal: transversal aspects. Challenge-based activity Group work to continue working on specific aspects of project design.

19:00 – 21:00: Social dinner

Thursday 18 January: Risk analysis and evaluation

09:30 – 09:45: Check-in: getting started Quick recap of the previous day and introduction to the fourth day of the training

09:45 – 10:15: Self-evaluating your project – Part 1. Risk analysis As the last session of proposal design, each group will run a quick analysis of their concept and prepare a list of main risks and potential corrective measures, based on template

10:15 – 10:30: Project design pills: evaluation criteria. Presentation Short and tips-like presentation on how to use the evaluation criteria to prepare a sound proposal

10:30 – 11:30: Self-evaluating your project – Part 2. Matching the criteria. Simulation Each group evaluates their own project based on the call criteria. A simplified self-evaluation template based on the official criteria will be provided.

12:00 – 13:00: Pitches and group discussion Participants present their pitches in the plenary.

14:00 – 15:00: Making your project evaluation proof. Simulation The expert evaluator gives live feedback to the draft proposals based on the self-evaluation sheet and the pitches.

15:00 – 15:30: Conclusions and group discussions Recap of the workshops take-aways on evaluation between participants and moderators

15:30 – 16:00: Closing of the training: reflection practice Final self-reflection practice about the workshop experience

Meet your trainers

Lead trainer.

Viola Pinzi is Head of Projects at EAEA since January 2023. She is responsible for the overall coordination of projects and proposals. Previously, she has worked as project manager and technical product manager at European Schoolnet, in the area of digital skills and online safety, for initiatives such as Better Internet for Kids, Digital Skills and Jobs Platform and Digital SkillUp. Viola has 20 years’ experience in the fields of education and employment, with a focus on design and planning as well as social inclusion and integration of technology in services. She holds a degree in Communication Sciences from the University of Siena and MSc in Information Studies from the University of Amsterdam. LinkedIn profile of Viola Pinzi

Co-trainers

Raffaela Kihrer is Deputy Secretary General and Head of Policy at EAEA and has extensive experience in advocacy and policy on adult learning and education at the European and international level, with a particular focus on citizenship and development. Since June 2022, she is also an elected Vice-President of the Lifelong Learning Platform which brings together all sectors of education. Her background is in International Development Studies, and she is a trained teacher in secondary school education and adult learning.

Christin Cieslak is Head of Programmes and Stakeholder Engagement at EAEA. Gerontology and Adult Education/Lifelong learning graduate from Germany, with deep knowledge and working experience in transnational cooperation on a European level. She has worked for four national Agencies, assessed LLLP and E+ applications for over ten years, and was the EPALE CSS project manager.

Angeliki Giannakopoulou is an EAEA Project Coordinator. She holds an Integrated Master’s degree in Computer Engineering and Informatics from the University of Patras and has followed certified training and certification processes on Adult Education, Counseling and Gender studies. Before her work in the EAEA she was a project manager and adult educator at DAFNI KEK in Greece and her key areas of interest on ALE are digitalisation and media, safe public spaces (both physical and digital) gender, and intersectionality.

Frequently asked questions

What are the eligibility criteria to participate in the training.

We welcome adult education staff who work primarily on European projects. Maximum three staff members from one sending organisation can join the training.

There is also a limitation on the total number of participants who can take part in the face-to-face training: minimum eight and maximum twenty. EAEA reserves the right to cancel the training if the minimum number of participants is not reached. In case the interest exceeds our capacity, priority will be given to participants representing EAEA member organisations.

We encourage you to apply early as we will be evaluating the registrations on a rolling basis.

I have just registered for the training – is my participation confirmed?

Your participation in the training will be confirmed as soon as possible by email by one of the EAEA staff members.

Will EAEA make recommendations for accommodation and logistics?

Each participant will receive a practical information package which will include recommendations for affordable hotels, tips on getting around Brussels, and more.

Are there any informal get-togethers planned for participants?

EAEA will organise dinner for all participants, and possibly other activities – we will keep you posted!

What does the training fee cover?

The fee of 500 EUR, 400 EUR or 350 EUR (the amounts depend on the type of organisation you represent) covers your participation in the training in Brussels, course materials and coffee breaks.

When do I pay the fee?

EAEA will invoice you for the participation in your training after your registration. Please note that all participants are asked to pay the fee before the training takes place; the deadline for payment will be indicated on the invoice.

I still have questions! Whom do I contact?

For questions about the training, please contact EAEA Head of Capacity-Building Aleksandra at [email protected].

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Mobility for learners and staff in adult education

This action supports adult education providers and other organisations active in the field of adult education that want to organise learning mobility activities for adult learners and education staff.

The action is open to a very diverse range of organisations, such as adult education schools and learning centres; civil society, non-governmental and volunteering organisations; counselling centres, libraries, museums, cultural, community and social centres; as well as other organisations working for persons with disabilities, senior citizens, persons at the risk of poverty or social exclusion, etc.

A wide range of activities are supported, including individual and group mobility of adult learners, job shadowing and professional development courses for staff, invited experts, and other activities as explained below.

Adult learners can include any persons benefitting from activities and services provided by organisations active in adult education. Projects can organise activities focusing on citizenship, learning about Europe, community services, volunteering, intergenerational exchanges, critical thinking, active aging, etc.

The participating organisations should actively promote inclusion and diversity, environmental sustainability, digital education, as well as civic engagement and participation through their activities. They should do so by using the specific funding opportunities provided by the Programme for these purposes, by raising awareness among their participants, by sharing best practices, and by choosing appropriate design for their activities.

Objectives of the Action

This action aims to provide learning opportunities to individuals and to support internationalisation and institutional development of adult education providers and other organisations active in the field of adult education. The action will contribute to the implementation of the Skills Agenda and to the creation of the European Education Area. Specifically, the objectives of this action are:

• Strengthening the European dimension of teaching and learning
• promoting values of inclusion and diversity, tolerance, and democratic participation
• promoting knowledge about shared European heritage and diversity
• supporting development of professional networks across Europe
• Improving the quality of formal, informal and non-formal adult education in Europe for key competences as defined by the EU framework (2018), including basic skills (literacy, numeracy, digital skills) and other life skills
• extend and diversify adult education offer through professionalisation of educators and building capacity of adult education providers
• simplifying the implementation and accessibility of high quality  teaching and learning programmes in all forms of adult education, and making them relevant to the needs of individual and the society at large
• building the capacity of adult education providers to carry out high quality mobility projects
• raising the  participation of adults of all ages and socio-economic background in adult education, especially by fostering participation of organisations working with disadvantaged learners, small adult education providers, newcomers to the Programme and less experienced organisations, as well as community-based grassroots organisations

How to access Erasmus+ mobility opportunities?

Adult education providers and other organisations active in adult education can apply for funding in two ways:

• Short-term projects for mobility of learners and staff – these projects provide applicants with an opportunity to organise various mobility activities over a period of six to eighteen months. Short-term projects are the best choice for organisations applying to Erasmus+ for the first time, or for those that wish to organise only a limited number of activities.
• Accredited projects for mobility of learners and staff – these projects are open only to organisations holding an Erasmus accreditation in the field of adult education. This special funding strand allows accredited organisations to regularly receive funding for mobility activities that contribute to the gradual implementation of their Erasmus Plan. Erasmus accreditations are open to all organisations that seek to organise mobility activities on a regular basis. Previous experience in the Programme is not required to apply. To find out more about this opportunity, please read the chapter of this guide on Erasmus accreditation in the fields of adult education, vocational education and training, and school education.

In addition, organisations can join the Programme without submitting an application by:

• Joining an existing Erasmus mobility consortium led by an accredited consortium coordinator in their country that is accepting new members in their consortium.
• Hosting participants from another country : any organisation can become a host for participants coming from a partner organisation abroad. Becoming a hosting organisation is a valuable experience and a good way to create partnerships and learn more about the Programme before applying yourself.

Setting up a project

The applicant organisation is the key actor in a Key Action 1 project. The applicant drafts and submits the application, signs the grant agreement, implements the mobility activities, and reports to their National Agency. The application process for both short-term projects and Erasmus accreditations focuses on the needs and plans of the applicant organisation.

Mobility activities in a mobility project can be outgoing and incoming. Most types of available activities are outgoing mobility activities. This means that the applicant organisation will act as a sending organisation: it will select participants and send them to a hosting organisation abroad. In addition, there are special types of activities that allow applicant organisations to invite experts, teachers and educators in training to their organisation. The purpose of incoming activities is not to create two-way exchanges, but rather to bring in persons who can help develop and internationalise the applicant organisation.

Implementation of all activities supported under this Action must follow the Erasmus quality standards. The Erasmus quality standards cover concrete implementation practices for project tasks such as selection and preparation of participants, definition, evaluation and recognition of learning outcomes, sharing of project results, etc. To read the full text of the Erasmus quality standards, please visit the following link at the Europa website: https://erasmus-plus.ec.europa.eu/document/erasmus-quality-standards-mobility-projects-vet-adults-schools .

Language learning is an important part of every mobility project: beneficiary organisations should provide their participants with language learning support before and during the mobility activities. For this purpose, Erasmus+ funds the Online Language Support platform which is free and open for use by all Erasmus+ participants.

How to find partners for your mobility activities?

Erasmus+ provides various tools and opportunities to find partners for your mobility activities:

• EPALE - the Electronic Platform for adult learning in Europe - offers an online partner-finding tool . You can register your organisation on the platform in order to post partner-finding announcements and search through announcements made by other organisations.
• Training and Cooperation Activities are regularly organised by Erasmus+ National Agencies. They include contact seminars, online events and other partner-finding opportunities for Erasmus+ applicants and beneficiaries. You can look for available Training and Cooperation Activities . You should also visit the website of your National Agency regularly to stay informed about their activities and events.
• The Erasmus+ Project Results Platform allows you to search for all accredited organisations and approved projects.

Horizontal dimensions

All mobilty projects should integrate the following dimensions common to the whole Erasmus+ programme.

Inclusion and diversity

In line with the Erasmus quality standards, organisations that receive support from the Programme must ensure that they offer mobility opportunities in an inclusive and equitable way, to participants from all backgrounds. The selection of learners that will take part in project activities should take into account key factors such as motivation, merit, as well as personal development and learning needs of the participants. Similarly, selection of staff participants should ensure that benefits of their professional development are available to all learners in the organisation.

Throughout the preparation, implementation and follow-up of mobility activities, the sending and hosting organisations should involve the participants in key decisions to ensure maximum benefits and impact for each participant.

Beneficiaries and other participating organisations that provide education and training are encouraged to actively create and facilitate mobility opportunities, for example by establishing mobility windows in their academic calendar and defining standard re-integration steps for returning participants.

Environmentally sustainable and responsible practices

In line with the Erasmus quality standards, organisations that receive support from the Programme must promote environmentally sustainable and responsible behaviour among their participants, raising the awareness about the importance of acting to reduce or compensate for the environmental footprint of mobility activities. These principles should be reflected in the preparation and implementation of all Programme activities, especially by using specific funding support provided by the Programme to promote sustainable means of travel. Organisations providing education and training should integrate these principles in their everyday work, and should actively promote a change of mind-set and behaviour among their learners and staff. 

Digital transformation in education and training

In line with the Erasmus quality standards, the Programme supports all participating organisations in incorporating the use of digital tools and learning methods to complement their physical activities, to improve the cooperation between partner organisations, and to improve the quality of their learning and teaching. In addition, participants can benefit from Digital Opportunity Traineeships: mobility activities allowing them to acquire digital skills and letting staff build their capacity to train, teach and complete other tasks with the help of digital tools. Such activities can be organised with any of the available mobility formats.

Participation in democratic life

The programme aims to help the participants discover the benefits of active citizenship and participation in democratic life. Supported mobility activities should reinforce participatory skills in different spheres of civic society, as well as development of social and intercultural competences, critical thinking and media literacy. Wherever possible, projects should offer opportunities for participation in democratic life, social and civic engagement through formal or non-formal learning activities. They should also improve participants’ understanding of the European Union and the common European values, including respect for democratic principles, human dignity, unity and diversity, intercultural dialogue, as well as European social, cultural and historical heritage.

Development of key competences

The programme supports life-long development and reinforcing of key competences needed for personal development and fulfilment, employability, active citizenship and social inclusion. Participating organisations should offer training and learning activities adapted to the specific needs of learners, helping them to achieve economic independence and dismantling barriers they face in education and social contacts.

This section presents the types of activities that can be supported by Erasmus+ funds, both as part of short-term projects and accredited projects.

For any activity, additional support can be provided for persons accompanying participants with fewer opportunities. Accompanying persons can be supported for whole or part of the activity’s duration.

Staff mobility

Eligible activities.

• Job shadowing (2 to 60 days)
• Teaching or training assignments (2 to 365 days)
• Courses and training (2 to 30 days, maximum 10 days of course fees per participant)

In addition to physical mobility, all staff mobility activities can be blended with virtual activities. The minimum and maximum durations specified above apply to the physical mobility component.

Implemented activities must fulfil the following qualitative requirements:

Job shadowing : participants can spend a period of time at a hosting organisation in another country with the aim of learning new practices and gathering new ideas through observation and interaction with peers, experts or other practitioners in their daily work at the hosting organisation.

Teaching or training assignments : participants can spend a period of time teaching or providing training to learners at a hosting organisation in another country, as a way to learn through completing their tasks and exchanging with peers.

Courses and training : participants can benefit from a structured course or a similar kind of training provided by qualified professionals, based on a pre-defined learning programme and learning outcomes. The training must involve participants from at least two different countries and must allow participants to interact with other learners and with the trainers. Entirely passive activities such as listening to lectures, speeches or mass conferences are not supported.

The training must include a clear transnational component, for example by fostering learning interaction between participants from two different countries and by integrating other elements of transnational transfer of practices, such as strong involvement of adult education staff from the hosting country to interact with and demonstrate their practices to colleagues coming from abroad.

The content of courses and training must be relevant for professional skills of the participating staff and the objectives of the project or accreditation.

For example, supported activities can include courses and training organised by public institutions or volunteer organisations, activities organised as part of an exchange of practices between organisations in different countries, as well as commercially available courses and training.  Entirely passive activities such as listening to lectures, speeches or mass conferences are not supported. Conferences and similarly titled events can be considered for funding only if participants spend most of their time in structured training, workshops, practical exercises, exchange of practices with colleagues, or other forms of active learning.

Applicants should be aware that all course providers are entirely independent from the Erasmus+ programme and are acting as service providers in a free market. The choice of courses and training is therefore a responsibility of the beneficiary organisation. The following quality standards are available as support to guide the applicants in their choice.

Eligible participants

Eligible participants include teachers, trainers, and all other non-teaching experts and staff in adult education.

Eligible non-teaching staff includes staff working in adult education, either in adult education providers (e.g. management staff, Erasmus+ coordinators, etc.) or in other organisations active in adult education (e.g. volunteers, counsellors,  Erasmus+ coordinators, policy coordinators in charge of adult education, etc.).

Participants must be working in the sending organisation, or must be regularly working with the sending organisation to help implement the organisation’s core activities (for example as external trainers, experts, or volunteers).

In all cases, the tasks that link the participant to the sending organisation must be documented in a way that allows the National Agency to verify this link (for example with a work or volunteer contract, task description, or a similar document). The National Agencies shall establish a transparent and consistent practice on what constitutes acceptable working relationships and supporting documentation in their national context.

Eligible venues

Activities must take place abroad, in an EU Member State or in a third country associated to the Programme.

Documentation of learning outcomes

Requirements for documentation of learning outcomes are established in the Erasmus quality standards and further elaborated in the project grant agreement.

Before the mobility activity, the sending organisation, hosting organisation, and the participant must agree on a learning agreement (or a similar document) specifying the participant’s expected learning outcomes. For courses and training, a course programme can be used in place of a learning agreement.

After the activity, the participant’s achieved learning outcomes must be recognised by issuing a Europass Mobility or a similar document. The beneficiary organisation must keep a copy of the issued document as proof of having completed the activity.

Learner mobility

• Group mobility of adult learners (2 to 30 days, at least two learners per group)
• Short-term learning mobility of adult learners (2 to 29 days)
• Long-term learning mobility of adult learners (30 to 365 days)

In addition to physical mobility, all learner mobility activities can be blended with virtual activities. The minimum and maximum durations specified above apply to the physical mobility component.

Group mobility of adult learners : a group of adult learners from the sending organisation can spend time in another country to benefit from innovative learning organised through cooperation between the sending and hosting organisations (purchase of commercially available training services is not supported). Activities may include a combination of various formal, informal and non-formal learning methods and techniques, such as peer learning, work-based learning, volunteering, and other innovative approaches. Qualified trainers from the sending organisation must accompany the learners for the entire duration of the activity and take part in the implementation of the learning programme. The content of group mobility activities should focus on key competences of adult learners or the inclusion and diversity, digital, environmental sustainability and participatory dimensions of the programme.

Short-term learning mobility of adult learners : adult learners can spend a period abroad at a hosting organisation to improve their knowledge and skills. An individual learning programme must be defined for each participant. The learning programme may include a combination of various formal, informal and non-formal learning methods.

Long-term learning mobility of adult learners : adult learners can spend a longer period abroad at a hosting organisation to improve their knowledge and skills. An individual learning programme must be defined for each participant. The learning programme may include a combination of various formal, informal and non-formal learning methods.

Please note that the difference between group and individual activity formats is not based on travelling and accommodation arrangements, but rather on requirements for collective or individual learning programmes, as described below under ‘Documentation of learning outcomes’. Accordingly,  a different level of organisational support is provided for group and individual activities, as defined in the funding rules presented at the end of this chapter. The group mobility format is recommended for simple activities that make use of existing resources and content, while individual formats are better suited for activities that require specific investment from the sending and receiving organisations (including in cases where several participants will be travelling and staying together).

Eligible participants are learners benefitting from adult education programmes or activities 1 at the sending organisation.

When selecting participants, all projects should aim for an inclusive and balanced mix of participant profiles and significant involvement of participants with fewer opportunities, in line with the objectives of the action.

Group mobility of adult learners must take place at the hosting organisation. Exceptionally, activities can take place at another venue in the country of the hosting organisation, if justified by the content and quality of the activity. In this case, travel of participants from the hosting organisation to the venue will not be considered as a transnational mobility activity. Additional funds therefore cannot be requested for this purpose.

In addition, group mobility of adult learners can take place at a seat of an Institution of the European Union if the activity is organised at or in cooperation with an EU institution 2

Individual mobility activities: before the activity, the sending organisation, hosting organisation, and the participant must agree on a learning agreement (or a similar document) specifying the participant’s expected learning outcomes. After the activity, the participant’s achieved learning outcomes must be recognised by issuing a Europass Mobility or a similar document. The beneficiary organisation must keep a copy of the issued document as proof of having completed the activity.

Group mobility activities: a learning programme must be defined for the whole group (individual learning agreements are not required). After the activity, beneficiary organisation must keep the learning programme and a participants list (including accompanying persons) as proof of having completed the activity.

Other supported activities

• Invited experts (2 to 60 days)
• Hosting teachers and educators in training (10 to 365 days)

Invited experts : organisations can invite trainers, teachers, policy experts or other qualified professionals from abroad who can help improve the teaching, training and learning at the receiving organisation. For example, invited experts may provide training to the receiving organisation’s staff, demonstrate new teaching methods or help transfer good practices in organisation and management.

Hosting teachers and educators in training : applicant organisations can host teachers in training who want to spend a traineeship period abroad. The hosting organisation will receive support to set up the activity, while the travel and individual support for the participant should be provided by their sending institution (which may apply for Erasmus+ funding for this purpose).

Invited experts can be any persons from another EU Member State or third country associated to the Programme, who can provide expertise and training relevant for the needs and objectives of the organisation that invites them.

Hosting teachers and educators in training is available for participants who are enrolled in or recently graduated 3 from a teacher education programme (or a similar kind of education programme for trainers or educators) in another EU Member State or third country associated to the Programme.

Preparatory visits can take place in EU Member States and third countries associated to the Programme.

The venue for invited experts and teachers in training is always the beneficiary organisation (including consortium members).

For invited experts, the learning programme that the expert will deliver must be agreed with the hosting organisation before the activity. After the activity, the beneficiary organisation must keep the executed learning programme as proof of having completed the activity.

For hosted teachers and educators in training, requirements described for individual learner mobility activities are applicable.

Preparatory visits

What is a preparatory visit.

A preparatory visit is a visit to a prospective hosting organisation by staff from the sending organisation with the purpose of better preparing a learner or staff mobility activity.

When can a preparatory visit be organised?

Each preparatory visit must have a clear reasoning and must serve to improve inclusiveness, scope and quality of mobility activities.

For example, preparatory visits can be organised to better prepare mobility of participants with fewer opportunities, to start working with a new partner organisation, or to prepare longer mobility activities.

Preparatory visits can be organised in preparation for any type of learner or staff mobility, except ‘courses and training’.

Who can take part in a preparatory visit?

Preparatory visits can be carried out by any persons eligible for staff mobility activities and involved in the organisation of the project.

Exceptionally, learners who will take part in long-term learning mobility and participants with fewer opportunities in any type of activity can take part in preparatory visits for their activities.

A maximum of three persons can take part in a preparatory visit, and a maximum of one preparatory visit can be organised per hosting organisation.

Where can preparatory visits take place?

Preparatory visits take place at the premises of the prospective hosting organisation, or any other venue where mobility activities are planned to take place. Rules applicable to venues of staff and learner mobility activities apply also to preparatory visits linked to those activities.

Short-term projects for mobility of learners and staff in adult education

Short-term projects for mobility of learners and staff are a straightforward and simple way to benefit from Erasmus+. Their purpose is to allow organisations to set up a few activities in an easy way and to gain experience in the Programme.

In order to stay simple, short-term projects include a limit on the number of participants and the duration of the project. The format is open only to individual organisations and not to consortium coordinators. Accredited organisations cannot apply for short-term projects since they already have permanent access to Erasmus+ funding.

The application for short-term projects includes a list and description of activities that the applicant organisation plans to organise.

Eligibility criteria

Eligible organisations: who can apply.

The following organisations are eligible 4 to apply:

• Organisations providing formal, informal and non-formal adult education 5
• Local and regional public authorities, coordination bodies and other organisations with a role in the field of adult education

Organisations holding an Erasmus accreditation in adult education cannot apply for short-term projects.

Eligible countries

Applicant organisations must be established in an EU Member State or in a third country associated to the Programme Country.

Where to submit an application?

Applications are submitted to the National Agency of the country where the applicant organisation is established.

Application deadlines

Round 1 (for all National Agencies): 20 February at 12:00:00 (midday Brussels time)

Round 2: National Agencies may decide to open a second deadline (Round 2). In this case, the National Agency will inform the applicants through its website. For Round 2 applicants have to submit their applications by 1 October at 12:00:00 (midday Brussels time) .

Project start dates

Projects can choose the following start dates:

• Round 1: between 1 June and 31 December of the same year
• Round 2 (if open): between 1 January and 31 May of the following year

Project duration

From 6 to 18 months

Number of applications

Per selection round, an organisation may apply for only one short-term project in the field of adult education.

Organisations that receive a grant for a short-term project under the first round of applications may not apply for the second round of the same call for proposals.

Within a period of any five consecutive call years, organisations may receive a maximum of three grants for short-term projects in the field of adult education. Grants received in the 2014-2020 period do not count towards this limit.

All types of activities for adult education. For a detailed list and rules, see section ’Activities’.

To be eligible, applications must include at least one staff or learner mobility activity.

Project scope

An application for a short-term project can include a maximum of 30 participants in mobility activities.

Preparatory visits and participation of accompanying persons will not count towards this limit.

Supporting organisations

A supporting organisation is an organisation assisting a beneficiary organisation in practical aspects of project implementation that do not concern core project tasks (as defined in the Erasmus quality standards).

Any organisation active in education and training can become a supporting organisation. The role and obligations of supporting organisations must be formally defined between them and the beneficiary organisation. The supporting organisation acts under the supervision of the beneficiary organisation, who remains ultimately responsible for the results and quality of implemented activities. All contributions of supporting organisations must comply with the Erasmus quality standards.

Hosting organisations that provide learning content and mentoring to the beneficiary organisation’s participants are not considered supporting organisations, unless they are at the same time supporting the beneficiary in other project management tasks that are normally performed by the sending organisation.

Award criteria

Submitted applications will be assessed by assigning points out of a total of 100, based on the below criteria and weightings. To be considered for award, applications must pass the following thresholds:

• At least 60 out of the total 100 points, and
• At least half of the maximum points in each of the three award criteria categories

Relevance (maximum score: 20 points)

The extent to which:

• the applicant’s profile, experience, activities and target population of learners are relevant for the field of adult education
• the project proposal is relevant for the objectives of the action
• the proposal is relevant for the respect and promotion of shared EU values, such as respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, as well as fighting any sort of discrimination.
• ­supporting newcomers and less experienced organisations
• ­supporting participants with fewer opportunities

Quality of project design (maximum score: 50 points)

• the proposed project objectives address the needs of the applicant organisation, its staff and learners in a clear and concrete way
• the proposed activities are appropriate for the achievement of the project objectives
• there is a clear work plan for each of the proposed activities
• the project incorporates environmentally sustainable and responsible practices
• the project incorporates the use of digital tools (particularly EPALE) and learning methods to complement their physical mobility activities, and to improve the cooperation with hosting partner organisations

Quality of follow-up actions (maximum score: 30 points)

• the applicant has clearly defined the tasks and responsibilities for delivery of activities in accordance with Erasmus quality standards
• the applicant has proposed concrete and logical steps to integrate the results of mobility activities in the organisation’s regular work
• the applicant has proposed an appropriate way of evaluating the project outcomes
• the applicant has proposed concrete and effective steps to make the results of the project known within the applicant organisation, to share the results with other organisations and the public, and to publicly acknowledge the European Union funding

Accredited projects for mobility of learners and staff in adult education

Organisations holding an Erasmus accreditation in adult education can apply for funding as part of a special funding strand open only for them. Applications are based on the previously approved Erasmus Plan, so a detailed list and description of the planned activities is not required. Instead, the applications focus on estimating the budget needed for the next set of activities.

Applicants must hold a valid Erasmus accreditation in adult education on the project start date.

Mobility consortium

Organisations holding an Erasmus accreditation for mobility consortium coordinators must apply for the mobility consortium format.

List of mobility consortium members must be provided as part of the application and must include at least one member organisation in addition to the coordinator.

Any organisation meeting the eligibility criteria for Erasmus accreditation in the same field can become a member of a mobility consortium. All planned consortium member organisations must be from the same EU member state or a third country associated to the Programme as the mobility consortium coordinator.

Consortium members are not required to have an Erasmus accreditation.

Organisations taking part in a mobility consortium can receive funding from a maximum of two Key Action 1 grant agreements in the field of adult education under the same Call for proposals. Therefore, adult education organisations that receive a grant for a short-term project or an accredited project can additionally take part in only one adult education mobility consortium as member organisations. Other organisations can take part in up to two mobility consortia.

Application deadline

20 February at 12:00:00 (midday Brussels time)

Project start date

1 June of the same year

All accredited projects will have an initial duration of 15 months. If justified, beneficiaries can request a prolongation of their project to a total duration of 24 months. Prolongations will be made after 12 months of implementation, unless otherwise decided by the National Agency.

   Accredited organisations may apply only once per selection round.

Available activities

The number of participants that can be included in accredited projects is not limited, apart from any limitations defined at the budget allocation stage.

Budget allocation

The quality of the applicant’s Erasmus Plan has been assessed at the accreditation application stage and therefore no qualitative assessment will take place at budget allocation stage. All eligible grant application will receive funding.

The awarded grant amount will depend on a number of elements:

• the total budget available for allocation to accredited applicants
• the requested activities (including the estimated budget required to implement them)
• the basic and maximum grant
• the following allocation criteria: applicant’s performance, policy priorities, and geographical balance (if applied by the National Agency)

Detailed rules on basic and maximum grant, scoring of the allocation criteria, weighting of each criterion, the allocation method, and the budget available for accredited projects will be published by the National Agency ahead of the call deadline.

What are the funding rules?

The following funding rules will apply for short-term projects and accredited projects for mobility of learners and staff in adult education.

Different budget categories are independent from each other: for any individual participant, the beneficiary can request all eligible unit contributions or only some of them (if the rest of the costs are covered in a different way). Funds received from Erasmus+ can be supplemented by the beneficiary organisation itself, by other EU funds, donations, or through participant contributions. In case the beneficiary requests participant contributions, they must remain in line with the relevant provisions of Erasmus quality standards. In particular, such contributions must not create barriers to inclusion of participants with fewer opportunities.

Budget category - Organisational support

Eligible costs and applicable rules.

Costs directly linked to the implementation of the project that are not covered by other cost categories.

For example: preparation (pedagogical, intercultural and other), mentoring, monitoring and support of participants during mobility, services, tools and equipment needed for project implementation, virtual components in blended activities, recognition of learning outcomes, sharing results and making the European Union funding visible to the public.

Organisational support covers the costs incurred by both sending and hosting organisations (except in the case of staff mobility for courses and training). The division of the received grant will be agreed between the two organisations.

Financing mechanism : contribution to unit costs. Rule of allocation : based on the number of participants.

• Per participant in staff mobility for courses and training
• Per invited expert
• Per hosted teacher or educator in training

Per learner group mobility.

350 EUR; 200 EUR after one hundred participants in the same type of activity

• ­Per participant in short-term learning mobility of adult learners
• ­Per participant in staff mobility for job shadowing and teaching or training assignments

500 EUR per participant in long-term learning mobility of adult learners

Budget category - Travel

Contribution to the return travel costs of participants and accompanying persons from their place of origin to the venue of the activity.

Below 500 km, participant will, as a general rule, travel with low-emissions means of transport.

Financing mechanism : contribution to unit costs.

Rule of allocation : based on the travel distance and number of persons.

The applicant must indicate the air distance between the place of origin and the venue of the activity 6 by using the distance calculator supported by the European Commission.

Budget category - Individual support

Costs of subsistence for participants and accompanying persons 7   during the activity.

If necessary: subsistence costs are eligible for travel time before and after the activity, with a maximum of two travel days for participants and accompanying persons receiving non-green travel grant, and a maximum of six travel days in case of a green travel grant.

Rule of allocation : based on the number of persons, duration of stay and receiving country 8

The above are the allowed ranges for base rates per day of activity. Within these ranges, each National Agency will decide on the exact base rates for projects under their management and will publish this information on its website.

The base rate is payable up to the 14th day of activity, (including travel days). From the 15th day, the payable rate will be equal to 70% of the base rate. Payable rates will be rounded to the nearest whole Euro.

Budget category - Inclusion support

Inclusion support for organisations : Costs related to the organisation of mobility activities for participants with fewer opportunities.

Rule of allocation : based on the number of participants with fewer opportunities.

125 EUR per participant

Inclusion support for participants : Additional costs directly linked to participants with fewer opportunities and their accompanying persons (including justified costs related to travel and subsistence if a grant for these participants is not requested through budget categories "Travel" and "Individual support"). Inclusion support can also be provided to staff with fewer opportunities taking on the role of accompanying persons or participating in a preparatory visit.

Financing mechanism : real costs.

Rule of allocation : the request must be justified by the applicant and approved by the National Agency.

100% of eligible costs

Budget category - Preparatory visits

Costs covering travel and subsistence for participation in a preparatory visit.

Financing mechanism : unit costs.

Rule of allocation : based on the number of participants.

680 EUR per participant, with a maximum of three participants per visit

Budget category - Course fees

Costs covering enrolment fees for staff mobility format ‘Courses and training'

Rule of allocation : based on the duration of the activity.

80 EUR per participant per day; an individual staff member may receive a maximum of 800 EUR in course fees within one grant agreement.

Budget category - Linguistic support

Costs of providing language learning materials and training to participants who need to improve the knowledge of the language they will use to study or receive training during their activity.

Linguistic support is eligible for participants in the following types of activities: job shadowing, teaching and training assignments, short-term mobility of adult learners and long-term learning mobility of adult learners.

Support is payable only if the participant cannot receive Online Language Support due to unavailability of the required language or level, or due to particular barriers faced by participants with fewer opportunities.  The above conditions do not apply to reinforced support provided for participants in long-term learning mobility of adult learners.

150 EUR per participant

In addition: 150 EUR of reinforced language support per participant in long-term learning mobility of adult learners.

Budget category - Exceptional costs

Costs for providing a financial guarantee, if the National Agency asks for it.

Expensive travel costs of participants and their accompanying persons that cannot be supported with the standard “Travel” grant due to geographical remoteness or other barriers. If awarded, the exceptional costs for expensive travel replace the travel support based on unit costs.

Visa and visa-related costs, residence permits, vaccinations, medical certifications.

Financing mechanism : real costs

Rule of allocation : the request must be justified by the applicant and approved by the National Agency. Expensive travel applies in cases where the travel support based on unit cost does not cover 70% of the travel costs of participants.

Costs for financial guarantee : 80% of eligible costs

Expensive travel costs : 80% of eligible travel costs

Visa and visa-related costs, residence permits, vaccinations, medical certifications : 100% of eligible costs

• 1 The definition of eligible adult education programmes and activities in each EU Member State or third country associated to the Programme will be defined by the competent National Authority and published on the website of the relevant National Agency. Education staff (teachers, trainers, educators, youth staff, etc.) or other employed adults are not considered to be adult learners in the context of this eligibility criterion unless they are at the same time participating as learners in a specific adult education programme or activity that is included in the above-mentioned definition by the competent National Authority. Adult education staff can participate in staff mobility activities described earlier in this section. Similarly, education staff working in other fields of education, training, youth and sport can participate in Erasmus+ mobility activities for staff, as described in the relevant sections of this Programme Guide. ↩ back
• 2   Seats of the Institutions of the European Union are Brussels, Frankfurt, Luxembourg, Strasbourg, and The Hague. Activities at the EU seats will be considered as a transnational mobility and funding (as described in section ‘What are the funding rules?’) can be requested for all participants, regardless of their country of origin ↩ back
• 3 Recent graduates are eligible to participate up to 12 months after their graduation. In case the participants have been fulfilling obligatory civil or military service after graduation, the period of eligibility will be extended by the duration of the service. ↩ back
• 4 The definition of eligible organisations in each EU Member State or third country associated to the Programme will be defined by the competent National Authority and published on the website of the relevant National Agency together with relevant examples. ↩ back
• 5 Without prejudice to definitions established by the competent National Authority, please note that organisations providing vocational education and training to adult learners are typically considered to be vocational education and training providers, and not adult education providers. For further information, please consult the applicable definitions on the website of your National Agency. ↩ back
• 6 For example, if a person from Madrid (Spain) is taking part in an activity taking place in Rome (Italy), the applicant will  calculate the distance from Madrid to Rome (1365,28 KM) and then select the applicable travel distance band (i.e. between 500 and 1999 km). ↩ back
• 7   In case of accompanying persons, the rates for staff apply. In exceptional cases, where the accompanying person needs to stay abroad for more than 60 days, extra subsistence costs beyond the 60th day will be supported under the budget heading "Inclusion support". ↩ back

Receiving country groups:

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• Mobility for pupils and staff in school education
• Mobility for learners and staff in vocational education and training
• Mobility projects for young people - “Youth Exchanges”
• Mobility projects for higher education students and staff
• Mobility of staff in the field of sport

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ICAE – International Council for Adult Education

ICAE’s mission is to promote learning and education for adults and young people in pursuit of social justice within the framework of human right in all its dimensions, to secure the healthy, sustainable and democratic development of individuals, communities and societies.

ICAE Strategic Guidelines for 2024 – 2027

Icae strategic guidelines for 2020 – 2023.

In pursuit of social justice within the framework of human rights in all its dimensions, ICAE remains committed to its mission to promote the right to education and learning for young people and adults, which includes older people.

 ICAE will work to achieve economic, cultural, social and ecological justice, enhancing international peace and understanding. Through education as a human right and education for democratic citizenship, ICAE will stand especially for vulnerable populations (e.g., those deprived of their right to education, those living in poverty, women and marginalised groups, and others).

However, the marginalisation of adult education, and of civil society organisations and networks within the education and development global agenda has seriously impacted on the financial resources of the ICAE. Nevertheless, the ICAE and our active regional and national members have continued to advance our agenda in key spaces such as the Mid-Term Review of CONFINTEA VI in Suwon, Korea and the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). These Strategic Guidelines acknowledge these multiple challenges but aim to build on our strengths, explore new opportunities and act with determination – together.

In its work, ICAE will have several priorities:

• The Seventh International Conference on Adult Education – CONFINTEA VII – in 2022 (preparations and input, follow up)
• The UN SDG platforms such as the HLPF and other SDGs related fora

These efforts include direct activities of global advocacy, as well as support of members in carrying forth this mission, and organising or taking part in capacity building measures for advocacy.

• Use intersectorality and cross-cutting approach, especially in advocacy related to
• Enhance and promote a gender perspective in all that we do.
• Secure financial stability of the organisation and enhance resource mobilisation that would enable ICAE to fight for its values, represent its members and those whom ICAE stands for, and to make the global case for ALE. It means bolstering our strategic intersectoral work with sectors such as health, environment, women, etc.
• Explore research capacities of ICAE (EC and member organisations) as possible way to provide evidences for ICAE’s advocacy and to raise funds.
• Decentralization of communication; use of the virtual tools of communication for both external and internal communication and for the meetings, wherever it is possible and meaningful.
• Address the diversity of languages whenever possible and affordable.
• ICAE should explore the way to work more intensive with the regional structures and to expand cooperation with them (especially to mobilise them for concrete events);
• Build cooperation with social movements, such as World Social Forum, as much as resources allow.
• Develop organizational mechanisms that would optimise available resources from within the regional and national members, such as acting on behalf of ICAE in different arenas.
• Organise regional activities together with the members and with the networks, in order to increase visibility and financial synergy.
• Develop with members the ways of using support and contributions in kind and other ways of non-direct financial contribution to ICAE and its activities.
• Cooperate with members and members association to help out financially to the donors. Apply for the projects together (national, regional and international), including intergenerational, intersectoral, inter-thematic approaches.

IX ICAE WORLD ASSEMBLY Declaration Montreal 14 June 2015

We, adult educators and learners of the world and members of the International Council for Adult Education, reaffirm, together with the 2015 World Education Forum, that education throughout life is a fundamental human right, a basis for guaranteeing the attainment of all other human rights, and a public good.

We reaffirm our global, regional and local commitments and our passion for the full realization of the right to education for peace. This right is required to build the world we want for all, especially for young and adult people, regardless of age, gender, ability or circumstances. This right is the foundation of a world based on democratic participation, justice, equality, respect, care and solidarity among our diverse people. We must be in harmony with our cultural and environmental rights… READ MORE!

International education projects

University of Helsinki Faculties, units and degree programmes are encouraged to actively participate in developing teaching and education by taking part in international cooperation projects. University of Helsinki has set internal guidelines for taking part in externally funded education projects. The guidelines are used as the starting point for preparing for new project initiatives or taking part in external project proposals.

Project funding applications need to be well prepared in cooperation with the project participants and enough time has to be reserved for the preparation of the project funding application. University of Helsinki can only take part in projects for which the funding application and budget have been prepared in cooperation.

If a partner wishes to invite us to join a project proposal, all documentation related to the project proposal must be submitted to the University of Helsinki for revision well in advance before the application is submitted to the funder. Project proposals sent close to the application round deadline will be automatically discarded.

Contact for all education project related matters is [email protected]

UnaVEx, Una Europa - Virtual Exchanges for Sustainability, 2023

CLUVEX, Climate University for Virtual Exchanges, 2023

Cooperation partnerships in higher education, since 2021

• Academies4Ukraine, Strengthen Higher Education resilience in Ukraine and European Union 2023
• ED-TED, Equity and Diversity in Teacher Educator Professional Development 2023
• FPD-Include, Faculty Professional Development for inclusion in pharmacy 2023
• STEAMKitchen, Bridging STEAM practices and home economics in teacher education 2023
• e-Teach, Upskilling Digital Pedagogy for Teachers and Future Teachers 2022
• REMODUS, The (Re-)Making of a Discipline: Digital Transformation and Internationalization in and beyond Uralic Studies 2021
• OIG, Outbreak investigation game for veterinary medicine education 2021

Cooperation partnerships in school education, since 2021

• Discovery Trail, Systematic use of digital outdoor learning tool. 2021
• DISC, Co-Creating inclusive school communities 2021

Small-scale partnerships in vocational education and training, since 2021

• Together towards knowledge 2022

Partnerships for Digital Education Readiness, since 2021

• HistoryLab, Historylab for European Civic Engagement: Open E-toolkit to train History Teachers on Digital Teaching and Learning 2021
• diLILAC, Digital transition of Lithuanian language and culture courses 2021
• NAVI-HED, Navigating through Digital Challenges in Home Economics Education 2021
• Veterinary educational online resources 2021
• VIrtual Pathways, Reinforcing School-Museum Cooperation in COVID19 Times 2021

Strategic Partnerships for higher education, funding granted in 2014-2020

• AGS, AGreen'Smart - Make agriculture sustainable through smart farming. 2020
• EMERALD, Developing an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master's Degree on Sustainable Natural Resource Management and Long-run Economic Development 2020
• INORP, Innovation through reflexivity and participation: Strengthening the education and professionalization of social work in professional interfaces 2020
• VetRepos, A shared item repository for progress testing in European veterinary schools 2020
• ASSET-H, Humanities students and the job market: bridging the gap 2020
• ReLiveD, Reflective Practice through Lived Diversity in Cultural Environments: Mobility and Knowledge Production in Early Years Teacher Training 2020
• RuralCOM, Joint Master's Curriculum in Rural Community Development 2020
• HUNTOUR, Development of education in relation to the influence of ongoing climate change to hunting tourism 2020
• RURuP, Innovative education for sustainable development in peripheral rural areas 2020
• ConnEcTEd, Coherence in European Teacher Education: Creating transnational communities of practice through virtual scenarios 2020
• EVALUATE, Developing a Framework for Evaluation of International University Partnerships 2019
• MiLLaT, Mediation in language learning and teaching 2019
• SkillMill, Helping Students in Higher Education Identify, Refine and Communicate Soft Skills gained during Studies Abroad 2019
• ENACT, Communities, Languages, and Activities App 2019
• LEGO, LEarning Genomics for food safety 2018  
• RomStudUni, Romani studies at Universities in Europe: Networking and Development 2018
• COPIUS, Community of practice in Uralic (Finno-Ugric) studies 2018
• IMAGE, Improving Employability of Autistic Graduates in Europe 2018
• HEDU_LEARN_IT, Harmonized European Dermato-Venereology Undergraduate blended LEARNing Implementation and Training 2018  
• OAIPT, Online Adaptive International Progress Test 2018
• INTRINSIC, Innovative education for sustainable entrepreneurship in life sciences 2018  
• ABC to VLE: beyond curriculum design 2018
• Grad-SPIRIT, Graduate school program for international researchers and interdisciplinary training 2017
• IlluminatED Illuminating effective teaching strategies with the science of learning. A project to empower teachers with cognitive neuroscience informed educational practices 2017
• Smart farming 2017
• EDIC+, Education for Democratic Intercultural Citizenship+ 2016
• INFUSE, Integrating Finno-Ugric Studies in Europe: Innovative resource pooling for a low-volume discipline 2015
• EUROPE ENGAGE, Developing a culture of civic engagement through service-learning within higher education in Europe 2014
• EPOS, Innovative Education towards the Needs of the Organic Sector 2014
• MASTERMIND EUROPE, Master's admission for a diverse international classroom 2014

Strategic Partnerships for school education, funding granted in 2014-2020

• DECoSTE, Designing and Enacting Coherent Science Teacher Education 2020
• CheSSE, Online resources for Chemical Safety in Science Education 2020
• DETECT, Developing Teachers’ Critical Digital Literacies 2019
• DEPTER, Strategic partnership for developing primary teacher education through school-based research 2019
• TEDS, Schools educating for sustainability: proposals for and from in in-service teacher education 2019
• PbC, Playing beyond CLIL 2018
• Spotlighters, Illuminating paths to resilience with the science of stress 2018
• LEAD, Learning and digitalisation in home economics education 2018
• OO, Online Observatory 2018
• PiCoSTE, Promoting Instructional Coherence in Science through Teacher Education 2017
• EL-STEM, Enlivened Laboratories within STEM Education, Motivating EU students to Choosing STEM studies and careers and improving their performance in courses related to STEM education 2017
• 3T, Time, talent and technology - Across 3 countries and philosophies - shaping the future 2016  
• CROSSCUT, Cross-curricular teaching 2016
• I SEE, Inclusive STEM education to enhance the capacity to aspire and imagine future careers 2016
• LINKS, Learning from innovation and networking in STEM - science, technology, engineering and mathematics 2016
• PLATON, Promoting innovative learning approaches for the teaching of natural sciences 2016
• EDINA, Education of international newly arrived migrant pupils at primary and secondary school level 2015
• SMILE, Coming to school with a smile: Reducing dropout in school 2015
• NEPL, Narrative environments for play and learning 2015
• ONTP, The outstanding new teacher programme 2014
• ROMTELS, Interactive deal language immersive learning space 2014

Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training, funding granted in 2014-2020

• DESIGNSTEM, Integrated design + STEM education 2016

Strategic Partnerships for youth, funding granted in 2014-2020

• Media Civic Engagers: Enhancing young people’s media literacy for civic engagement 2021

Strategic Partnerships for adult education, funding granted in 2014-2020

• ViSEnet, Village Social Enterprise learning material, guidance and networking 2018
• EHLSSA, European Elderly Home Learning Service 2014  
• Gamification for hard-to-reach adults new horizons for re-engaging and re-mobilizing hard-to-reach adults in long-term unemployment situations 2014
• HANDWELL, Handmade Wellbeing - Collaborative learning in craft and welfare interfaces 2015

Strategic Partnerships addressing more than one field, funding granted in 2014-2020

• EPOQUE, Environmental portfolio for quality in university education 2014
• Break down or Break Out! 2014
• SFS, Space for Science: Implementing Innovations in Science Education 2014

Una.Futura 2022

Una Europa 2019

TEFF, Teacher Education for a Future in Flux 2023

CLIMADEMY, CLIMAte change teachers' acaDEMY 2022

• ASC, Advanced Spectroscopy in Chemistry Master's Course 2019  ongoing, co-funded by the EU since 2003, information about previous ASC projects here
• EmPlant, Erasmus Mundus Master Program in Plant Breeding 2017
• IMESS, International Masters in Economy, State, and Society 
• BRAVE, Plant virology in the new era - Breeding for resistance (EU-ASIA), 2013
• EMFOL, Food of Life, 2010
• ACN, Erasmus Mundus - Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience, 2010

Alliances for Innovation

Care4Skills, Long-Term Care Sectoral Cooperation on Skills 2023

Knowledge Alliances

NEMHESYS, Establishment in Multidisciplinary Healthcare Education System 2019

MINNAGAN Enhancing skills and competences of local actors to promote sustainable development of plant-based remedies and phytomedicines in Benin 2023   

MIMIN, Good Hygiene - Improving Skills and Hospital Practices of Healthcare Professionals to Prevent Maternal and Neonatal Infections in Benin 2022

PRESS, Promoting Relevant Education in Science for Sustainability 2022

FORSU, Higher Education Cooperation for Forest Landscape Restoration and Sustainable Livelihoods in Bangladesh and Vietnam 2022

SEBA, Strengthening expertise and bioinformatics to control antimicrobial resistance in West Africa 2020

FRAME, Forests, climate change mitigation and adaptation: Higher Education Cooperation in Mekong region 2020

CLIMED, Multilevel Local, Nation- and Region-wide Education and Training in Climate Services, Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation 2020

CBHE-STEM, Integrated Approach to STEM Teacher Training 2019

Modernization of Doctoral Education in Science and Improvement of Teaching Methodologies 2018  

FORHEAL, Forestry Higher Education Advancement in Laos 2017

PISAI, Participatory and integrative support for agricultural initiative 2017  

ECOIMPACT, Adaptive learning environment for competence in economic and societal impacts of local weather, air quality and climate 2015  

Augmented Assessment: a bridge to migrants’ knowledge 2020

CALOHEE2, Measuring and Comparing Achievements of Learning Outcomes in Higher Education in Europe - Phase 2 2019

LEARNING2BE, Learning to be: Development of Practices and Methodologies for Assessing Social, Emotional and Health Skills Within Education Systems 2017

Jean Monnet Chair

• RESPONSES, EU and the Eastern European Responses: Spatiality, Security and the Rule of Law 2023

Jean Monnet Module

• The East Within Europe: An Eastern Angle to European Studies 2015

Jean Monnet Thematic Networks in Higher Education

• European Media and Platform Policy (EuromediApp) 2020
• Debating Europe 2020
• Citizenship Education in the Context of European Values - The Educational Aspect 2020
• Post-Truth Politics, Nationalism and the (De)Legitimation of European Integration 2019
• European Network on Soft Law Research 2016
• Children's identities and citizenship - Best practice guides 2014

Intensive courses for state-of-art atmospheric measurement and analysis in India 2023

Inclusive education in co-teaching teams: collaborative teaching practicum by Finnish and Southeast Asian teacher education students 2023

Museums, morphology, and molecules: new ways of evolution education 2023

Digital learning in STEAM pedagogy for the Equity of Education 2023

Oral and maxillofacial surgery training - experts of medicine in combining virtual 3D design and facial reconstruction 2023

Combating Antimicrobial Resistance: Finland-Brazil Partnership for Education and Awareness 2023

From Toxity to Safety 2023

NDDS, New Directions in Development Studies, and Sustainability: Reconsidering global challenges and local realities 2022

A Finnish-Mozambican collaboration to build capacity in higher education in food and nutrition sciences 2022

Indigenous Studies on languages, traditional knowledge and the environment within Amazonian-Finnish collaboration 2022

Indigenous Cultures in Evolution: Governing Rights and Responsibilities through Sustainable Law and Ethics 2022

Finland-China collaborative course on Global Food Safety: An approach to enhance global sustainability 2022

​​​​​​Cultivating pharmaceutical expertise within Taiwanese –Finnish cooperation 2021

Approaches to Digital Language Typology 2021

​​​​​​Microbiology from the One Health perspective 2021

Finnish-Russian Network on Area studies and Methodologies 2021

Pan-Eurasian EXperiment –Finnish-Russian Earth System Research Network 2021

HEP-TED: Higher Education Pedagogies for Teacher Education 2024

FoodLeader: Empowering Tomorrow's Food Security Leaders: Strengthening Higher Education Capacity for Sustainable Food Systems in Kenya and Mozambique 2024

TOTEMK Training Trainers for Teacher Education and Management in Kenya 2020

OLIVE Teacher Education without Walls –  New models for STEM and Teacher Education in the Digital age 2020

CLIDEV Strengthening Climate Change Education for Sustainable Development in Myanmar and Vietnam 2020

TAITAGIS Improving Capacity, Quality and Access of Geoinformatics Teaching, Research and Daily Application in Taita Taveta County, Kenya 2017

KENFIN-EDURA Building Higher Education and Research Capacity to Address The Physical Activity and Nutrition Transition in Kenya: The Kenya-Finland Education and Research Alliance 2017

PARFORM Partnership for Forestry Higher Education Cooperation in Mekong Region 2017

HEFSESE Higher Education for Food Security and Environmental Sustainability in Eritrea 2015

GIERI Strengthening Geoinformatics Teaching and Research Capacity in Eritrea Higher Education Institutions, HEI ICI Eritrea project 2015

Digital Library Services - HEI ICI Eritrea project 2015

The Higher Education Institutions' Institutional Cooperation Instrument (HEI ICI) supports cooperation projects between higher education institutions in Finland and the developing world that are designed to enhance higher education provision in these countries. The projects support the higher education institutions in developing their subject-specific, methodological, educational and administrative capacities.

Finland’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs provides funding for the programme through its development cooperation funds and the Finnish National Agency for Education (EDUFI) administrates the programme.

University of Helsinki has been actively participating to the HEI ICI programme for several years.

First Literacy Grant Funded Projects

First Literacy Grant Funded Projects support innovative ideas for Adult Basic Education (ABE) program or curriculum initiatives. Our grants offer both financial and administrative support and improve the classroom experience for both adult learners and their teachers. Previous funded projects are highlighted below.

To receive important updates about First Literacy Grant Funded Projects, join our mailing list . We also encourage you to visit our library of online resources , where First Literacy Grant Funded Project Presentations can be accessed and adapted for your own programs.

For questions about First Literacy Grants, contact Bryan McCormick, Program Director, at 617.482.3336 x113 or [email protected] .

2023-2024 First Literacy Grant Funded Projects

Please note, the 2023 Spotlight on Innovation in Adult Basic Education will highlight the 2022-2023 grant recipients. To view these projects please scroll to the bottom of the page. 

Casserly House ESOL Consultant

The Casserly House will hire a consultant to assist all volunteer ESOL staff in the development of curriculum that will serve the newly arrived immigrant with little or no English-speaking skills. The goal is for the consultant to introduce volunteer teachers to effective teaching tools and best practices in ESOL teaching strategies and student needs assessment. The consultant will also collaborate with community partners to offer “teachable” workshops for neighborhood immigrants to address priority needs, such as affordable housing, workplace equity and rights, and other topics of concern. The desired outcome of the project is to sharpen volunteer teaching skills that will benefit the newly arrived immigrants and offer them real-life resources to help them in their daily lives.

Partner Program: Casserly House Community: Metro Boston Students Served: 24 Award Amount : $7,500

Juvenile (16+) Justice Diversion Program

The Juvenile Justice Diversion Program aims to create a comprehensive program that will prevent youth and young adults from having a criminal record. The program will hold first time offenders accountable for their behavior without resorting to legal sanctions, court involvement and oversight, or threat of fines, fees, or incarceration. The program will include preventative and interventive work with young adults, direct contact with local law enforcement chiefs, judges and prosecutors to design Individualized Diversion Plans for at-risk students to equitize opportunities for this population, prevent future contact with the court system, increase educational and employment outcomes, and create pathways for success.

Partner Program: Charlestown Adult Education  Community: Metro Boston Students Served: 170 Award amount: $15,000

Strengthening Family Literacy Curriculum and Assessment

In April 2022, IINE-Lowell’s Family Literacy class was launched to address the English language and literacy learning needs of adult Afghan women who have not yet developed literacy in their primary languages. Our project will address two challenges students face in this class. An assessment tool used by adult English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) programs in Massachusetts with pre-literate students, only measures gains in English speaking and listening, we plan to pilot a new tool, the ABLE Assessment. This new tool has been designed to assess progress in English reading among this population. Second, more needs to be done to help students independently increase English language and internet exposure and practice. We plan to design a curriculum component using the USA Learns online platform documenting students’ use of the program and impact on learning gains.

Partner Program:  International Institute of New England-Lowell Community: Metro North Students Served: 197 Award amount: $5,000

English Connection Conversation Seminar

The English Connection Conversation Seminar was created for students who completed a high level ESOL class but wish to continue their language development with an advanced learning program. The purpose of the project-based seminar is to take an inquiry-driven and action-oriented look at issues of power and justice impacting the student, their communities, and the planet.

Partner Program: Jamaica Plain Community Center’s Adult Learning Program Community: Metro Boston Students Served: 231 Award amount: $2,500

ESL for Educational Settings: Curriculum Design and Implementation

During the second year of this project, Friends of the Hernández will continue the work of developing and implementing ESL curriculum for those in the Primeras Maestras Program. This unique program trains low-income Spanish speaking parents to become dual language educators. The curriculum has a specific focus on classroom management, social-emotional learning, literacy instruction, and restorative practices. It also specifically addresses language needs related to certification tests for targeted career areas.

Partner Program: Friends of the Rafael Hernández School  Community: Metro Boston Students Served: 37 Award amount: $3,750 (2nd year of funding)

2022-2023 First Literacy Grant Funded Projects

The english connection: promoting resiliency of self, community, and planet.

The purpose of this seminar is to take an inquiry-driven, action-oriented look at power and justice as it relates to interrelated issues impacting students, communities, and the planet. This seminar will host guest speakers monthly. Students who have advanced beyond their terminal ESOL level but wish to continue their language development studies will be best suited for this project-based seminar.

Partner Program:  The Jamaica Plain Community Center’s Adult Learning Program Community:  Metro Boston Students Served:  136 Award Amount : $5,000

Environmental Education for a Better Life

Two high level ESOL students will develop a high beginning/low intermediate ESOL contextualized curriculum aimed at educating ESOL students about three major areas of environmental concern: solid waste, energy, and water. The project will include collaborations with the City of Lawrence and Groundwork Lawrence to bring local environmental resources and information to the program.

Partner Program:  The Notre Dame Education Center-Lawrence, Inc Community:  Metro North Students Served:  400 Award amount:  $5,983

The Primeras Maestras Program at the Rafael Hernández Dual Language School in Roxbury, Massachusetts trains low income, unemployed, or under-employed immigrant parents as bilingual educators, leveraging their native Spanish language fluency as an asset for student learning. As parents participate in the program, they take English as a Second Language (ESOL) classes and financial literacy classes to strengthen their employability and establish their financial independence. This program will develop an English as a Second Language curriculum to specifically address the language skills participants need in educational settings.

Partner Program:  Friends of the Rafael Hernández School Community:  Metro Boston Students Served:  16 Award amount:  $7,500

English for Employment Advancement

This flexible program offers curricula and materials that will allow Adult Basic Education organizations to engage with local businesses to offer English Language classes to their incumbent workers.

Partner Program:  Pathways Adult Education & Training, Inc. Community:  Metro North Students Served:  300 Award amount:  $5,649

We/Us/Ours: Inclusive Language and Practices Project

Queer and non-binary people, as well as a wide variety of ways of being a family, are completely unrepresented in published ESOL curriculum and textbooks. We/Us/Ours: Inclusive Language and Practices Project’s goal is to strategically engage ESOL teachers and students in staff development and ESOL lessons that more accurately reflect the reality of gender and family diversity. Program participants will develop sample diverse family visual materials, grammar lessons focusing on singular “they”, and multimedia texts that will empower and inspire their staff to have more inclusive teaching practices and prompt learners of English to engage with current language and topics related to queer identity and diverse families.

Partner Program:  Friends of the Cambridge Community Learning Center Community:  Metro North Students Served:  800 Award amount:  $5,000

Family Literacy Class Volunteer Engagement to Support Access and English Learning for Afghan Women

This Family Literacy course combines beginner-level ESOL with basic literacy skill development to address the English language and literacy learning needs of adult Afghan women who have not yet developed literacy in their primary languages. Classes are taught by an experienced instructor in teaching ESOL supported by an Education Program Assistant and volunteers who speak Dari and Pashto to help clients develop the English proficiency needed to meet basic needs as they rebuild their lives in the U.S. Female evacuees who could not access literacy education in their home country of Afghanistan will engage in a more immersive learning experience, build community with peers, and find their voices as they rebuild their lives in the U.S.

Partner Program:  International Institute of New England-Lowell Community:  Metro Boston Students Served:  99 Award amount:  $2,332

Really Great Reading Project

Really Great Reading is a training tool that helps educators increase student outcomes by identifying areas of weakness. This identification allows educators to develop lessons that accurately address student needs.

Partner Program:  The Literacy Project Community:  Western Massachusetts Students Served:  250 Award amount:  $13,741

Program Consultant to Improve Existing High School Equivalency Test (HiSET) in Spanish and ESOL Program

Mujeres Unidas Avanzando (MUA) will contract Barbara Krol-Sinclair, a leader in the education field who speaks fluent Spanish, to provide ongoing consulting to MUA’s HiSET department as well as support the English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) department. The goal of this project is to maximize the teachers’ performance to increase HiSET attainment and Educational Functioning Level (EFL) and enter next steps to become work ready.

Partner Program:  Mujeres Unidas Avanzando (MUA) Community:  Metro Boston Students Served:  200 Award amount:  $7,500 (2nd year of funding)

Digital and Technical Literacy Workshop for Immigrant English Language Learners

IINE-Boston’s Digital and Technical Literacy Workshop provides comprehensive, foundational, digital, and technological literacy skill development for refugee and immigrant English learners. Through project-based work and scaffolded support, this program meets students where they are to practice and develop proficiency using Zoom, email, and web-based employment and learning resources. Students will learn how to successfully apply these skills to engage in online learning, access employment and educational resources, and navigate their daily lives.

Partner Program:  International Institute of New England-Boston (IINE-Boston) Community:  Metro Boston Students Served:  165 Award amount:  $2,500 (2nd year of funding)

Re-entry Youth Program

This project is a comprehensive re-entry program for recently incarcerated and court-involved/at risk youth (ages 16 – 30) who need a HiSET/GED certification or to improve language proficiency. These individuals are in desperate need of educational opportunities and resources to help them adjust to life outside of prison, prepare for next steps, and reduce the chance of becoming part of the alarming 40% recidivism rate in Massachusetts. Funds will allow continued employment of a youth case manager to coordinate and individualize resources for students so that they may succeed in their educational and employment goals.

Partner Program:  Charlestown Adult Education Community:  Greater Boston Area (Charlestown, Dorchester, Mattapan, Roxbury, Hyde Park, Jamaica Plain, Revere, and Chelsea) Students Served:  165 Award amount:  $7,500 (2nd year of funding)

Sharing Our Stories: An Interactive, Digital Exploration of Our Lives

The main goal of this project is to increase the literacy and digital literacy skills of adult learners. Workshops will introduce students to the memoir style, improve their writing and editing skills, and help them write the stories about their lives. Students will read and listen to memoirs, learning what a memoir is, what memory is and how it functions, and understand how exploring their stories and sharing them helps to connect them to others. Professional authors will make guest appearances at the workshops to present memoir from their perspective.

Partner Program:  The Literacy Project Community:  Franklin and Hampshire counties of western Massachusetts Students Served:  30 Award amount:  $2,500 (2nd year of funding)

2021-2022 First Literacy Grant Funded Projects

Book clubs for adult ed learners: using e-readers and e-books to increase access.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a light upon an issue for our students that is neither new, nor unique; our learners have very limited access to physical books and other reading materials in their homes. With the shutting of schools and libraries for over a year, which many depend on for access to reading materials, our students have had restricted access to books, dwelling in what has been coined as “book deserts.” To counter this type of barrier, we want to supply our students with e-reader devices and equip them with knowledge on how to use them. We will do this by running two extra-curricular book clubs during the school year where each student will be given a Kindle Paperwhite, and provided with support in using it through participation in a 10-week book club.

Partner Program: Boston Public Schools, Department of Adult Education, Adult Learning Center Community: Boston Students Served: 20 Award amount: $7,500

We propose to create a comprehensive re-entry program for recently incarcerated and court-involved/at risk youth (ages 16 – 30) who need a HiSET/GED certification or to improve language proficiency. These individuals are in desperate need of educational opportunities and resources to help them adjust to life outside of prison, prepare for next steps, and reduce the chance of becoming part of the alarming 40% recidivism rate in Massachusetts. The goal of this project is to hire a youth case manager to coordinate and individualize resources for students so that they may succeed in their educational and employment goals.

Partner Program: Charlestown Adult Education Community: Greater Boston Area (Charlestown, Dorchester, Mattapan, Roxbury, Hyde Park, Jamaica Plain, Revere, and Chelsea). Students Served: 100 Award amount: $15,000

Technical Literacy for Immigrant English Language Learners

IINE’s Technical Literacy for Immigrant English Language Learners program will address knowledge and experience gaps to help adult immigrants and refugees become proficient in using computers, accessing the internet, send/receiving email, logging into and participating in remote video classes and webinars, and completing online applications. Through training sessions that focus on technical vocabulary and hands-on practice, immigrants and refugees will gain the knowledge and skills to access benefits and employment opportunities and engage fully in online learning and facilitating independence and success in an increasingly digital world.

Partner Program: International Institute of New England-Boston Community: Boston and communities across Greater Boston Students Served: 20-30 Award amount: $5,000

The main goal of our Sharing Our Stories project is to increase the literacy and digital literacy skills of our adult learners. Our workshops will introduce students to the memoir style, improve their writing and editing skills, and help them write the stories of their lives. Students will read and listen to memoirs, learning what a memoir is, what memory is and how it functions, and understand how exploring their stories and sharing them helps to connect them to others. Professional authors will make guest appearances at the workshops to present memoir from their perspective. The last two weeks of the project will be spent rehearsing the readings and preparing discussion questions for the digital event.

Partner Program: The Literacy Project Community: Franklin and Hampshire counties of western Massachusetts Students Served: 30 Award amount: $7,500

Program Consultant to Improve Existing High School Equivalency Test (HiSET) in Spanish Program, Resulting in Better Alignment with the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) Indicators of Program Quality and More HiSET Attainments

Mujeres Unidas Avanzando (MUA) will contract Barbara Krol-Sinclair, a leader in the education field who speaks fluent Spanish, to provide ongoing consulting to MUA’s HiSET department. Topics will include updating the curriculum to fully integrate the College and Career Readiness Standards for Adult Education (CCRSAE); fuller integration of the Indicators of Program Quality as mandated by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE); update of teacher evaluation documents and conversations to drive a plan for improved instruction; integrating digital literacy, including the use of break-out rooms and more tools such as annotating to engage students on Zoom; leadership training for teachers to identify areas of program improvement and to propose solutions; and tying it all together.

Partner Program: Mujeres Unidas Avanzando Community: Dorchester, Roxbury, Mattapan, Roslindale Lynn, Chelsea, Quincy, Malden, Somerville, and Cambridge Students Served: 75 Award amount: $15,000

2020-2021 First Literacy Grant Funded Projects

Adding kahoot to gacc online and zoom classroom instructional.

Three members of the GACC teaching staff will integrate the Kahoot educational app into Literacy, Beginner and Low Intermediate levels of ESOL instruction. The project will include time before fall classes begin for teachers to explore Kahoot capacities and to create sets of level-appropriate Kahoot activities. The project is also intended to provide student learning opportunites beyond class meetings. Teachers will meet regularly to discuss and develop best strategies for integration of Kahoot into their curricula.

Partner Program: Gilbert Albert Community Center (GACC) Community: Dorchester Students Served: 45 Award amount: $2.966

ACCESS ESOL

IINE’s ACCESS ESOL program seeks to resolve transportation and accessibility barriers for 30 low-income and transitionally housed refugees and immigrants in the Boston area. Through transportation support and the establishment or distance learning infrastructure and curricula, IINE will expand the impact of current ESOL programming to benefit Boston’s underserved refugees and immigrants.

Partner Program: International Institute of New England (IINE) – Boston Community: Boston Students Served: 30 Award amount: $3,382

Evening and Remote ESOL for Low-Income Immigrants

IINE’s expanded Evening and Remote ESOL programming will strengthen the impact of existing Lowell-based ESOL programming by extending IINE’s Lowell, MA ESOL class accessibility to students with daytime work or childcare constraints, or mobility or transportation challenges. The program seeks to reach these refugees and immigrants with the language skills and cultural knowledge to navigate their communities, seek and secure jobs, apply for higher education opportunities, or pass their citizenship test.

Partner Program: International Institute of New England (IINE) – Lowell Community: Lowell Students Served: 25 Award amount: $4,670

Student Leadership Council

MCAE will create a Student Leadership Council (SLC) to engage Adult Basic Education (ABE) students from multiple programs in advocating on state and local policy systems that influence their lives. MCAE will provide advocacy training and guide students through an advocacy activity that can engage other students around an issue of their choosing. Students will deliver a workshop about their project at MCAE’s annual NETWORK conference.

Partner Program: Massachusetts Coalition for Adult Education (MCAE) Community: Boston Students Served: 20 Award amount: $4,000

Identifying Misinformation in the News

Weaving together English language and digital literacy skills, MUA students will learn the importance of verifying information, checking facts, and evaluating sources. The ESOL III class will sharpen their language and technology skills by producing and distributing a “newsletter” to the MUA community, in which all articles are researched, written, and formatted by the students.

Partner Program: Mujeres Unidas Avanzando (MUA) Community: Dorchester Students Served: 12-15 Award amount: $4,620

TEAMS: Teacher Exellence and Mentoring Support

A collaboration between two adult education programs, TEAMS will use an action research framework, asset-mapping and peer coaching to support lasting teacher development. It will create a network of nine action plans, each leading to a specific improvement in teaching practice, and collective sharing of resources and learning.

Partner Program: The Care Center Community: Holyoke Students Served: 120 Award amount: $5,000

The Connection Project: Multi-Media Blogging for English Language Learners

The YMCA ILC will establish a class to help students explore personal expression through digital media including personal essays, photography, podcasting, and video editing. The ultimate result, titled “The Connection Project,” will be a website where students can browse other students’ work and share it across different platforms.

Partner Program: YMCA of Greater Boston – International Learning Center Community: Boston Students Served: 15 Award amount: $4,235

2019-2020 First Literacy Grant Funded Projects

Diving in deep with children’s books which resonate.

The Blackstone Community center will use their First Literacy Lab grant funding to develop lessons and teach ESOL family literacy classes centered around high-interest children’s books that resonate deeply with parents.

Partner Program: Blackstone Community Center (BCYF) Community: Boston Students Served: 25 Award amount: $3,500

ESOL Family Literacy — Library Partnership

(Continuation of a successful year 1 grant) The Brookline ESOL program will develop an ESOL family literacy curriculum utilizing children’s literacy, art, and storytelling, and promoting understanding and utilization of the local library.

Partner Program: Brookline ESOL Program Community: Brookline Students Served: 10 Award amount: $4,000

Emerging Literacy and iPads

This project will develop curriculum using iPads for pre-literate ESOL students.

Partner Program: Center for New Americans Community: Northampton/Amherst Students Served: 120 Award amount: $5,000

HIP to SMS: Helping Immigrant Parents to be Social Media Savvy

FAESLP will use this grant to develop and implement a program-wide initiative to help immigrant parents learn how to guide themselves and their children through the challenges of today’s social media environment.

Partner Program: Framingham Adult ESL Plus (FAESLP) Community: Framingham Students Served: 800 Award amount: $3,500

Money Talks and Your Voice Matters: Financial Skills for Immigrants, Refugees, and Asylees

IINE will use this funding to develop curriculum for a pilot financial skills course designed to provide refugees and immigrants with practical financial education and tools.

Partner Program: International Institute of New England (IINE) Community: Boston Students Served: 30 Award amount: $5,000

Think! Executive Function Skills Workshops

This project involves developing and teaching a 12-week workshop aimed at improving the executive function and learning skills of High School Equivalency students.

Partner Program: Joan Brack Adult Learning Center Community: Framingham Students Served: 12 Award amount: $5,000

College for You and Me/ College Para Ti y Para Mi

MUA will develop and pilot a new class geared to help ESOL students evaluate their options for higher education, and to prepare students to succeed in the college application process.

Partner Program: Mujeres Unidas Avanzando (MUA) Community: Boston Students Served: 20 Award amount: $5,000

Pre-Family Literacy: ESOL for Parents and Caregivers with Low Levels of English Proficiency

This grant will fund the adaptation of a family literacy curriculum for lower level ESOL students, and a summer class which will provide a pathway to traditional family literacy classes in the fall.

Partner Program: Quincy Asian Resources Community: Quincy Students Served: 18 Award amount: $5,000

Getting Connected to Massachusetts through Historic Tourism

This grant will fund a pilot for a summer ESOL class focused on Massachusetts’ history, incorporating classroom lessons and field trips.

Partner Program: YMCA International Learning Center Community: Boston Students Served: 20 Award amount: $5,000

2018-2019 First Literacy Grant Funded Projects

Parent talk: an esol unit for parents of very young children.

This project will focus on developing and teaching an ESOL curriculum for parents of young children to improve students’ ability to communicate with health care providers, day-care teachers, and shelter staff about their children.

Partner Program: ATASK Community: Boston Students Served: 10 Award amount: $5,000

Take Advantage of Boston’s Cultural Resources

The Blackstone Community center will use their First Literacy Lab grant funding to create ESOL curriculum centered around student and family field trips to Boston cultural sites.

Partner Program: Blackstone Community Center (BCYF) Community: Boston Students Served: 20 Award amount: $2,900

Family Literacy and Storytelling

The Brookline ESOL program will develop a curriculum to teach English language skills using children’s literature and involve students in a digital storytelling project.

Partner Program: Brookline ESOL Program Community: Brookline Students Served: 20 Award amount: $5,000

Poetry Is Power

This project will incorporate poetry into the ESOL classroom. Students will create a school literary journal and have the opportunity to present their poems publicly.

Partner Program: Center for New Americans Community: Northampton/Amherst Students Served: 50 Award amount: $5,000

Live Performances Initiative

This project will give beginner ESOL students the opportunity to attend live classical and dance performances. These field trips will be used to reinforce and expand on the English curriculum.

Partner Program: International Learning Center – YMCA Community: Boston Students Served: 25 Award amount: $3,000

DRIVE — Learner’s Permit Preparation for Refugees and Immigrants

(Continuation of a successful year 1 grant) This two-part course helps refugee and immigrant students prepare for their Massachusetts driver’s permit exam.

Volunteer in English — ESOL Through Service-Learning Projects

MUA will introduce a service-learning component to their ESOL class. This will encourage students to play an active role in their communities and learn more about Boston resources.

Partner Program: Mujeres Unidas Avanzando (MUA) Community: Boston Students Served: 15 Award amount: $4,500

We Are All Immigrants — a play

NOAH will organize and direct a group of ESOL students to perform a play about the immigrant experience. Performances will be held for the community and recorded for use by other programs.

Partner Program: Neighborhood of Affordable Housing (NOAH) Community: East Boston Students Served: 15 Award amount: $3,500

Civic Leadership Academy

This workshop series will provide student leadership training and involve students in advocacy activities.

Partner Program: North Shore Community Action Programs, Inc. (NSCAP) Community: Peabody Students Served: 12 Award amount: $5,000

Science Encounters

This science curriculum for High School Equivalency students will include hands-on projects and labs.

Partner Program: South Middlesex Opportunity Council, Joan Brack Adult Learning Center Community: Framingham Students Served: 12 Award amount: $5,000

What Page Are You On?

This grant will help the Springfield Adult Learning Center implement a program-wide “one-book” community. All ABE students and teachers will participate in reading books that share a common theme. Independent reading will be supported by student journaling, classroom activities, and discussion.

2017-2018 First Literacy Grant Funded Projects

Reading for our journeys.

This project will expand availability of high beginning/low intermediate reading materials that support the Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence (ATASK)’s educational and psychosocial objectives.

Partner Program: ATASK Community: Boston Students Served: 8 Award amount: $5,000

In this program teachers will establish a weekly class-like book club for students in all levels of ESOL instruction.

Partner Program: Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Network (BCNC) Community: Boston- Chinatown Students Served: 75 Award amount: $5,000

GACC Magazine of Student Writing

In this project instructors will develop a year-long program of integrating student writing into all levels of their curriculum.

Partner Program: Gilbert Albert Community Center (GACC) Community: Dorchester Students Served: 45 Award amount: $5,000

Creating a Comprehensive Technology Curriculum for ESOL and ABE Students

This project will support the program’s newly-identified computer literacy teacher in developing curriculum materials for computer instruction across the program’s levels.

Partner Program: Haitian Multiservice Center (HMSC) Community: Dorchester Students Served: 150 Award amount: $5,000

Learner’s Permit Preparation for Refugees and Immigrants

In this project IINE will provide a Learner’s Permit Preparation training course for English for Employment (EFE) students.

Partner Program: International Institute of New England (IINE) Community: Lowell Students Served: 30 Award amount: $5,000

From Exposure to Mastery: Helping Adult ELLs Develop Content Knowledge in Math

With this project educators will develop and apply ways to integrate math into the ESOL curriculum through contextualized instruction.

Partner Program: Jamaica Plain Community Center Adult Learning Program (JPCCALP) Community: Jamaica Plain Students Served: 130 Award amount: $5,000

ESOL for the Home Health Aid Career

Instructors will create an ESOL class with curriculum designed to strengthen the clinical component of Home Health Aid training.

Partner Program: Mujeres Unidas Avanzando (MUA) Community: Dorchester Students Served: 20 Award amount: $5,000

Walking, Weather, and Writing

This grant will fund a multidisciplinary team-based curriculum, blending content areas of health/fitness, science, discovery of local natural resources, journaling, and oral presentation.

Partner Program: Quincy Asian Resources Community: Quincy Students Served: 12 Award amount: $5,000

SCALE Connections

This project, which is the continuation of a successful Year 1 grant, will help English language learners practice conversation skills and build connections in the English-speaking community.

Partner Program: Somerville Center for Adult Learning Experiences (SCALE) Community: Somerville Students Served: 40 Award amount: $5,000

ESOL Computer Basics

In this project instructors will design and implement a basic computer class for ESOL students to prepare them to use USA Learns as a wait list lead into ESOl classes.

Partner Program: South Middlesex Opportunity Council (SMOC) Community: Framingham Students Served: 45 Award amount: $5,000

Building Language Through Art

This project will target level one students in a 7-week program focusing on poetry and visual arts to encourage accelerated English language acquisition.

Partner Program: St. Mark Community Education Program Community: Dorchester Students Served: 25 Award amount: $3,385

Computer Literacy and Leadership Development

Building on a 2016 – 2017 Literacy Lab grant, this project will offer computer literacy classes using more experienced students as assistants to build leadership skills.

Partner Program: Welcome Project Community: Somerville Students Served: 30 Award amount: $5,000

2016-2017 First Literacy Grant Funded Projects

Summer esol gardening class.

Students will receive both ESOL instruction and hands-on experience on the environment, gardening, plants and vegetables, comparing practices in their countries and the US, a garden educator from City Natives involved in the project.

Partner Program: ABCD Community: Mattapan Students Served: 15 Award amount: $4,726

Reading and Writing Skills in Leveled ESOL Classes

This project will pilot multi-level instruction, making for instruction targeted at students’ varied English levels in reading, writing, listening and speaking.

Partner Program: ATASK Community: Boston Students Served: 30 Award amount: $5,000

Increasing Impact of Volunteers

In this Program Strengthening pilot, students will benefit from more extensive and effective volunteer-led ESOL instruction.

Writing Techniques for Personal Goals and Improvement

Students will be given additional instruction and resources to develop their writing skills, for their high-school equivalency and their academics and professional next steps.

Partner Program: Boston Center—Youth & Families (BCYF) Perkins Adult Learning Program Community: Dorchester Students Served: 25 Award amount: $4,490

WeChat Video Lessons: A Fun Way for Chinese Speakers to Overcome Pronunciation Issues

Video lessons using WeChat will be developed and implemented. These lessons will allow students to improve their English pronunciation in a format already familiar to them.

Partner Program: Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Network (BCNC) Community: Boston-Chinatown Students Served: 35 Award amount: $5,000

Digital Memoir Project for Immigrant Seniors

Immigrant seniors will be preserving their life stories through images and text, an e-book created to record their experiences, so they will continue to live, to be shared through time.

Partner Program: Brookline Learning Project Community: Brookline Students Served: 16 Award amount: $3,850

Administrative Assistant Preparation Class

This pilot class will train adult learners for jobs as a administrative assistants. Filing, record keeping, phone etiquette, and computer skills will be taught, with job referrals also part of the model.

Partner Program: Charlestown Adult Education /BHA Charlestown Community: Charlestown Students Served: 15 Award amount: $5,000

Professional and Academic Discourse

Basic remedial writing will be addressed in this project, with lessons on grammar, formal vs. informal English, and sentence structure, all to prepare students for their next academic or professional step.

Computer Tool Tech “Free Way”

Program students will receive instruction and do hands-on work with computers, forming and Information Technology (IT) Lab. Students will learn and get experience upgrading, maintaining, securing, and customizing computers.

Partner Program: Mujeres Unidas Avanzando (MUA) Community: Dorchester Students Served: 12 Award amount: $5,000

Digital Space-Repetition Curriculum for Low-Level English Learners

A digital, spaced-repetition system will be developed for low-level English learners using ANKI, an open-source program for combining text, image, and audio digital flashcards.

Partner Program: Project Literacy Community: Watertown Students Served: 15 Award amount: $4,989

Extending Extended Reading for Community ESOL

This grant will fully integrate the program’s extensive reading project begun last year, enabling teachers to collaborate and plan how to make extensive reading a key component of their ESOL classes.

Partner Program: Quincy Asian Resources Community: Quincy Students Served: 81 Award amount: $3,526

Volunteers from the local community will be recruited, trained and will provide small-group tutoring for program students, the model based on Intercambio in Boulder, Colorado. Events will be held for students and community members, including potlucks, dances, and field trips.

Partner Program: SCALE Community: Somerville Students Served: 40 Award amount: $5,000

ESOL Curriculum Strengthening Project

This program will strengthen its ESOL program with the purchase and pilot usage of a textbook series and development and trial of curriculum developed to complement it.

Partner Program: Vietnamese American Civic Association Community: Dorchester Students Served: 60 Award amount: $4,490

Computer Literacy for Immigrants

Computer Literacy classes will be piloted in this project, instruction including MS Word, keyboarding, online basics, and emailing. Students will be giving PowerPoint presentation by the end of the class.

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