The main target group of DECENT project are low qualified adult individuals who are at risk of social exclusion (long-term unemployed, threatened by poverty, poorly educated). All project activities will be geared to solve problems and improve the situation of this group. Furthermore, the project will create tools for institutions which support and take care for people with functional illiteracy, such as: adult education centers, schools for adults, third age universities, associations witch support the fight against functional illiteracy, local and regional self-government education departments as well as adult educators. Even though project will be implemented for the target group in just six countries, its main outcome is addressed to adults from across the European Union. Completely illiterate persons cannot read or write in any capacity, for all practical purposes. In contrast, functionally illiterate persons can read and possibly write simple sentences using limited vocabulary, but cannot read or write well enough to deal with everyday requirements of life in their own society. Moreover, in our project, we plan to incorporate a definition of digital illiteracy because inability to handle the simple devices and web services is currently causing the greatest degree of discrimination and exclusion among the societies. The main goal of the DECENT project is to increase the effectiveness of the fight against the functional illiteracy among low qualified adults who are at risk of social exclusion in Romania, Poland, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Spain and Italy The aim will be achieved through: - development of course “Decent life without illiteracy” - development of eTool for fighting with functional illiteracy The partnership has been built based on the principle of complementarily skills and experience among partners. As a result, we can present generated a mixture of different organizations: Asociatia de Dezvoltare Economico-Sociala - RO, Centrum Wspierania Edukacji i Przedsiebiorczosci - PL, Know and Can - BG, CARDET - CY, INSTALOFI LEVANTE SL - ES, CENTRO PER LO SVILUPPO CREATIVO DANILO DOLCI - IT united around the main objective of the project. Expected impact on the target group of the project and relevant stakeholders can be estimated at more than 6400 people across the partnership (testing, multiplayer events, dissemination).
All the organisations that partnered for the preparation and implementation of DECENT project are providing adult education. From their current activities they identified one widely spread problem: many adults, especially the low qualified ones are facing functional illiteracy problems which prevent them to attend professional and personal development courses. This was the starting point of the collaboration of the 6 partners of the project. They also had in view that UNESCO study (I.2017) indicated that the level of functional illiteracy was very high among the adult population in their countries: 68,9% in RO, 51,8% in PL, 66% in BG, 43% in CY, 39,1% in ES, 62,2% in IT. At the same time it must be emphasized that adults who are affected by the functional illiteracy most often are not aware of it or displace it from their consciousness. Director of Worldwide Education Strategy at Microsoft Corporation, Steven Duggan, stated that we need to view illiteracy as a health epidemic, and devote the same resources, we allocate to crises such as the Ebola outbreak, in tackling this issue. He also asks the question if given rapid advances in the ubiquity and power of mobile technologies, whether illiteracy is becoming an epidemic “for which the vaccine is already in people’s pocket.” The main goal of DECENT project was to increase the effectiveness of the fight against the functional illiteracy among low qualified adults who are at risk of social exclusion in Romania, Poland, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Spain and Italy. Through the activities of the project, the six partners sought to raise the basic skills related to “learning to read”, “numerical calculation”, “effective communication”, “use of the modern technology”, as well as the general understanding and use of texts and numerical calculations for managing the daily living and employment tasks among the low qualified adults who are at risk of social exclusion in the partners’ countries. Meanwhile, the activities of the project were an awareness raising trigger for the adult educators who would have at their disposal a set of methods and tools that would allow them to contribute to reducing the functional illiteracy among the adults. That is why the main target group of DECENT project consisted of low qualified adult individuals who were at risk of social exclusion (long-term unemployed, threatened by poverty, poorly educated). All project activities were geared to tackle their functional illiteracy problems and to improve the situation of this group. Furthermore, the project created tools for institutions which support and take care of adult who are at risk of social exclusion (adult education centres, social welfare institution, schools for adults, third age universities, associations supporting the fight against functional illiteracy and social exclusion, local and regional self-government education departments and adult educators). Two outputs developed by the partners proved to be of real help for both target groups: the course "DECENT Life without Illiteracy" consisting of 6 modules to be used by the adult educators in their work with the adult learners facing functional illiteracy and the e-Tool/ interactive digital platform for fighting against functional illiteracy, consisting of 6 topics related to the results of the first intellectual output to be used both by adult educators in their work and by adult learners for overcoming their problems of functional illiteracy. All the results of the project can be found on its webpage (https://decent.erasmus.site/) and its Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/decent.project/). They are provided in 7 languages: English, Romanian, Polish, Bulgarian, Greek, Spanish and Italian. For the partner organizations, as well as for trainers, the theoretical information, basic diagnostic exercises and methodologies for combating and limiting the consequences of functional illiteracy were gathered in one place. With the current job market situation, this tool, if properly implemented, could help many find a job, protect them from social exclusion, and help them deal with problems in their daily lives. It is also positive that people who chose not to share their problems of functional illiteracy have the opportunity to directly test their knowledge and skills on the platform and at least to be aware of the lack or presence of problems on the selected topics, as well as to start improve their knowledge. An active dissemination of the project results as well as the succession of creation and validation of the outputs, ensured a high outreach of the project (over 180,000).