"Learning Community - Immigrants as Educational Facilitators Pave the Way for Immigrants to Access Lifelong Learning"
Duration: 01.10.2009 - 01.10.2012
Project Proposal
Education is crucial to Europe’s future. If the EU wants to become the most competitive and dynamic market and successful in overcoming the demographic change till 2010, it is necessary that all citizens have access to lifelong learning, building the fundament of the European knowledge society. Our project "Learning Community" is based on the fact, that migrants in almost all European countries have an insufficient access to lifelong learning. On the one hand, migrants often have deficits in qualification. At the same time, migrants are rarely using offers of vocational adult education. The insufficient access to education has not only consequences concerning the personal development but also negative social and economic implications: it impedes social integration and hinders migrants to participate in companies’ internal programmes of further training since migrants represent the biggest group of unemployed people in the European countries.
Main focus of the project is to train migrants to act as educational ambassadors, helping members of migrant communities to utilize offers of lifelong learning and to understand why such programs are important concerning their personal development as well as their professional career.
Objectives / Expected Results
Objectives of the project are the improvement of access to lifelong learning, the empowerment of the target group, the dismantling of structural barriers, and the support the personal development, to strengthen the employability and to foster the social integration of the target group.
Our project develops an innovative approach of advising migrants, fostering their empowerment, designing new materials for adult learners and training multipliers.
Expected results comprise:
- Better knowledge about the utilization of opportunities of lifelong learning by migrants; about barriers and needs of the target group and about the target group orientation of learning opportunities and by providers
- Trained multipliers with migration background work as educational facilitators for Lifelong Learning in their communities
- Utilization of the approach of educational facilitators as good practice in different settings
- innovative methodological consulting approach for the empowerment of migrants
- Trained multipliers
- Pilot actions
- Curriculum and teaching materials for the training of educational facilitators and handouts for their work
- Information (website, leaflets, flyers, publications, etc.)
- Policy recommendations for transfer and utilization, and a guideline “educational facilitators”