The education and training of adult people is often hindered by the lack of clear and stimulating goals for these kind of students. Sometimes because it is not adapted to the students’ real needs, and others it has not practical consequences in their everyday life. The project “VIRTUAL INCLUSIVE EDUCATION FOR ADULT PEOPLE: VOLUNTEERS AND REFUGEES” will last 24 months and it would be necessary because of two reasons: On one hand, fostering adult people’s education through working with migrant people. Social voluntary service can be the activity that encourages adult people to improve their education. With the collaboration between social organisations working specifically in these matters and educative centres for adult people, an educative practical process will be created. This process will bring together the development of their basic, languages and digital skills, a recognised degree or certificate, and an education combining virtual training and social services to increase their self-esteem, personal motivation, leadership and social undertaking. On the other hand, promoting the integration of refugees, offering them the tools for their integration through an e-learning platform which will adapted and designed according to their specific needs, in their native languages, by social organisations with experience in this field. The project will generate a collaborative system with an exchange of experiences between the migrant people and national adult people and educative and social organisations, to promote citizenship, solidarity and integration. It will include a high innovative virtual training with courses, materials and ICTs distributed in three levels: BASIC SKILLS-INCLUSION-EMPLOYABILITY. A cross-sectoral partnership (companies, educational centers, social organizations) will design educative materials, courses, didactics programs and methodologies. That NGOs will guide the learning process of the volunteers, which in turn will become the tutors of the refugees with the support of the organisations with experience in education. This project expects to create a strategic network among six organisations: Educative materials design specialists: Redtree Making Projects (Spain), European Language Equality Network (France) and Smallcodes (Italy), and training providers for adults and social organizations working with migrants and refugees: Asociación de Jóvenes Musulmanes en Valencia (Spain), Greta du Velay (France) and Giovani Musulmani Italia (Italy), to assess the reports “Adult Learners in Digital Learning Environments (EAC-2013-0563) and “An in-depth analysis of adult learning policies and their effectiveness in Europe”, which have been published in 2013 by the Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion General Direction from the European Commission. Taking this analysis as a basis, a smart virtual and telematic learning system is proposed, able to define the user profile (previous knowledge, languages, strengths and weaknesses in their education...) and to create personalized learning pathways that will allow social volunteer adult people to develop skills (both basic and specific) and certify their learning. The system will also include educative modules to improve the inclusion of the migrant people and refugees, through the development of their basic skills, namely reading, writing, math and digital skills. They will get accredited with professional certificates recognised by the European Union countries. In order to do so, an SMART EDUCATIVE E-LEARNING PLATFORM FOR INCLUSION is proposed, able to define the specific needs of the adult people to adapt the educative pathways to them, through both synchronic and asynchronic virtual learning, also counting with in-person and blended training that can be tracked by the users. This high quality intellectual output will propose a full educative service, with a great impact on: - EUROPEAN ADULTS, who will find a motivation to study and to receive basic and specific education to be useful to their community and its people in need. - MIGRANT and REFUGEES PEOPLE, who will find a virtual space where they can receive a specific and certified training, and where they will meet people and organisations willing to help them in their social inclusion. -SOCIAL ORGANISATIONS, which will find a specific training system for new volunteers, as well as an efficient way to bring the future volunteers into contact. Moreover, they will find a platform with resources and tools to create international networks and to obtain educative materials for adult people education. -ACADEMIES AND EDUCATIVE CENTRES FOR ADULT PEOPLE, which will find a system for the internationalisation of their education offer, and a new cross-sectoral methodology. This network, which will include the partners and multiple collaborating organisations from the beginning, will include over time more countries and new educative and social organisations.
During the last years, a strategic and intersectoral partnership of 6 entities (REDTREE, ASOCIACIÓN DE JÓVENES MUSULMANES EN VALENCIA, GIOVANNI MUSULMANI ITALIA, SMALLCODES, EUROPEAN LANGUAGE EQUALITY NETWORK and GRETA DU VELAY) concerned for social inclusion and education has developed the project “VIRTUAL INCLUSIVE EDUCATION FOR ADULT PEOPLE: VOLUNTEERS AND REFUGEES”, with the objective of developing an impactful educational tool capable of not only achieveing the objectives proposed in the official curriculum, but also of increasing the interest of the students and improving their living conditions. Adult education and training are often hampered by the lack of clear and stimulating goals for these students; this happens either because it is not adapted to the real needs of students, or because it has no practical consequences for their daily lives. This is why VIVAR has been created: an e-learning platform capable of promoting an effective learning for adult persons, thanks on the one hand to the exclusive programming of the platform, which is able to identify the previous knowledge of the users and adapt its contents to them, and on the other hand because it seeks to solve real and daily needs of the users. In order to achieve this, VIVAR promotes the education of adults through volunteer work with migrant persons. Volunteer social service can be the activity that encourages adults to improve their education, and it opens up job opportunities in the 3rd sector. With the collaboration between social organizations that work specifically on these issues and adult education centers, a practical educational process has been created to allow adult users to develop the skills and knowledge necessary for volunteering (from the development of basic skills, basic knowledge of English and Arabic, and digital skills). These contents have been created in close collaboration with migrants and refugees, one of the beneficiary groups of the volunteer activity. But this project also directly promotes the inclusion of migrant and refugee persons, offering them the tools for their integration through an e-learning platform that adapts to their specific needs, in their native languages, which develops not only their basic skils, but also provides the necessary guidelines and knowledge for their inclusion in Europe. These contents have also been developed in close collaboration with migrants and refugees, and with experts in the field of volunteering. Thus, the VIVAR platform proposes an intelligent virtual and telematic learning system, capable of defining the user profile (their previous knowledge, languages, needs...) and creating personalized learning paths to allow them to volunteer to develop skills (both basic and specific) and certify their learning by allowing NGOs to guide their learning process, in turn becoming tutors of refugees with the support of organizations with experience in education. This system also includes specific educational modules to improve the inclusion of migrants and refugees through the development of their basic skills -reading, writing, math, and digital skills-, certifying their learning in a document endorsed by the partner and collaborating entities. During these years, a sustainable strategic partnership was established that is achieving good results in the fields of education and inclusion, where not only these 6 partner entities are active, but also more and more collaborating entities that are getting new users to use the platform and that more entities benefit from and disseminate this result to enhance the training of volunteers and adults. All of this has been done thanks to the 5 Transnational Meetings held, 1 large Multiplier Event, various dissemination activities among expert multipliers in the beneficiary groups, various national activities for the development of the results, multiple evaluation activities carried out in adult education centers linked to Greta du Velay (France), and 4 pilot tests with each of the beneficiary groups. In short, we have developed an impactful tool with a great future ahead that is being implemented by dozens of European entities (adult education centers, NGOs and companies) and has currently issued more than 80 certificates that have allowed these adult students to improve their educational training, qualify for higher degrees, facilitate their inclusion, and offer new avenues for their socialization.