The project wanted to support the employees and teachers of the adult education centers with a massive qualification initiative. On the one hand - very specifically - the urgently needed improvement in active language skills in English, the lingua franca, should be promoted. That was the main goal of the Munich adult education center involved, the largest adult education center in Germany, which had not previously participated in any Erasmus+ project. Communication with foreign-language customers/participants should be improved. The partners involved, who have more experience from previous projects, did not only want to promote structured further training in the field of foreign languages, but also wanted to stimulate a fundamental improvement in their educational offerings. The aim was to support the teachers in particular, many of whom are in a rather precarious living situation due to their freelance work in one of the most expensive regions of Germany. Qualifications were possible here across the entire spectrum of educational opportunities and were intended to help improve the offerings. The aim was also to get to know EU projects.
The catchment area of the adult education centers of the consortium is in the metropolitan region of Munich. It is a region that, due to the socio-structural composition of the population, the strong influx of refugees in particular in recent years and the ongoing internationalization of Munich as a business location, both in terms of the requirements for our educational offerings and the skills of our employees and lecturers of the adult education centers demand particularly high standards in the area of intercultural competence and in the command of foreign languages: good foreign language skills, especially in English, the lingua franca, and the basic willingness for constant qualification are basic conditions for the successful work of our institutions. Significant deficits existed and still exist in these areas: Both in terms of the active foreign language skills in customer/participant contact of the permanent employees and the fundamental willingness to permanently improve the educational offerings of the freelance teachers, there was a need for a massive improvement in the further training efforts of our institutions.