Teaching basic skills to low skilled adults is probably one of the most difficult educational assignments in the field of adult education. Addressing the needs of the long-term unemployed; migrants; refugees; asylum seekers; and indigenous ethnic minorities like Roma demands considerable skill and dedication. And yet, anecdotally at least, educators working with these most marginalised groups tend to be the least well trained and least well resourced. In-service training to support the continuous professional development of adult educators is essential if they are to develop new and innovative approaches to attract marginalised adults back to lifelong learning. The OutsideIN project will develop and implement a totally new in-service training programme complete with a handbook to support the continuous professional development of adult educators. An educators toolbox complete with a full suite of 15 resources addressing key competence areas will be made available to front-line adult education staff to support their work with marginalised adults and a bespoke on-line learning environment will be developed and populated with the innovative curriculum resources contained in the educators toolbox. These resources will be available on-line and made available to all interested parties without restriction in keeping with the open access requirements of the ERASMUS+ programme. Each partner will host a major learning festival event in their local area with the specific task of engaging marginalised adults. A final conference will be held in Ireland to present the resources developed and National Campaigns will be organised in each partner country to present the policy paper produced. A minimum of 3 front-line adult educators from each partner country will attend the Transnational Training Event to be held in Malta. This event will support the realisation of a cascading model of training and a minimum of 10 front-line adult educators will complete the first iteration of the in-service training in each partner country during the project life-cycle with support from the 3 adult educators who participated in the transnational training event. The local regions where partners work will benefit from the increased social inclusion achieved. The potential savings to service providers will be significant for every marginalised person who is reintegrated into lifelong learning. OutsideIN will be presented as a best practice example and will clearly demonstrate that even the most hard to reach target groups can be encouraged to get involved and participate in learning. Increased participation rates of marginalised adults in education and training will have a considerable effect on the social inclusion objectives of Member States and the realisation of a fairer and more equitable society for all in Europe.
Teaching basic skills to low skilled adults is probably one of the most difficult educational assignments in the field of adult education. Addressing the needs of the long-term unemployed; migrants; refugees; asylum seekers; and indigenous ethnic minorities like Roma demands considerable skill and dedication. And yet, anecdotally at least, educators working with these most marginalised groups tend to have fewer opportunity for CPD training and least well resourced. At the heart of the OutsideIN project is the belief that in-service training to support the continuous professional development of adult educators is essential if they are to develop new and innovative approaches to attract marginalised adults back to lifelong learning and education. The OutsideIN project consortium, lead by Meath Partnership and comprising Acrosslimits, RightChallenge, Siglo22 and Eurotraining, has developed, piloted and implemented a new in-service training programme complete with a training handbook to support the continuous professional development of adult educators working with the most marginalised adult learners. An educator's toolbox complete with a full suite of 16 digital mini-format resources in English, Portuguese, Spanish and Greek, addressing key competence areas is also available to these front-line adult education staff to support their work. All resources, including the training manual and resource toolbox, are available in all partner languages on an online learning environment at https://outsidein-project.eu. These resources will continue to be available until 2024 to all interested parties without restriction in keeping with the open access requirements of the ERASMUS+ programme. In 2019, the project partners hosted a series of major community learning festivals in their local areas with the specific task of engaging marginalised adults to interact and experiment with the digital tools created and provide access opportunities to re-engage with lifelong learning. The final conference which was held in Ireland on 18th September 2019 presented the resources developed by the consortium and engaged 104 marginalised learners and adult educators. 17 front-line adult educators from across the partner countries attended the Transnational Training Activity in Malta in April 2019. This event supported the realisation of a cascading model of training with a further 58 front-line adult educators completing the first iteration of the in-service training in Ireland, Spain, Malta, Greece and Portugal during 2019 with the support of those, that participated in the transnational training event. The local regions where partners work have benefited from the increased social inclusion achieved and the new opportunities to engage with the projects' target groups. The potential savings to service providers may well be significant for every marginalised person who has engaged with the OutsideIn project and may ultimately be reintegrated into lifelong learning. OutsideIN has developed, piloted and presented a best practice example and has demonstrated that even the most hard to reach target groups can be encouraged to get involved and participate in learning if the opportunities to engaged are well conceived and appropriately communicated. Increased participation rates of marginalised adults in education and training will have considerable effects on the social inclusion objectives of Member States and the realisation of a fairer and more equitable society for all in Europe.