Please provide a short summary of your project. Please recall that this section (or part of it) may be used by the European Commission, Executive Agency or National Agencies in their publications. It will also feed the Erasmus+ Project Results Platform. The Sustainability-21 project concentrates on promoting social and cultural sustainability in the field of adult education. In co-operation with six partners we will create applicable education modules based on the Agenda 2030, in order to implement the ideas and practices of social and cultural sustainability into adult education and civil society. The main target groups are educators, facilitators and coordinators in the field of adult education and people working with civil society associations and NGOs. The project partners have all worked with the different themes of social and cultural sustainability, and regocnized the need of clarifying the meaning and supporting the concrete performing of sustainability in everyday European life. The methodology used in the activities and produced educative material is based on the ideas and values of life-long learning, eco-social approach to education and transformative learning. Supporting critical and aware active citizenship are in key roles. By educating the facilitators within associations and NGOs, we promote lifelong learning that is affordable and enables people from all walks of life to participate, which in return contributes to social and cultural sustainability by increasing the level of understanding, critical reflection skills and knowledge of participators of such non-formal and informal learning. The project group consists of six adult education operatives from Finland, Poland, Italy and Cyprus. Together they represent both formal and non-formal areas, with two universities and four organisations working with art and culture, basic skills, active citizenship, integration, immigration, social entrepeneurship and empowerment of different social groups. Combining the academical theory and practical know-how of implementing theory into practice creates deep and adept education tools to apply in different contexts of adult education. The project partners create six education modules based on chosen goals of the Agenda 2030. The production of the versatile modules will be an iterative process. The content and representation methods will be co-created together with the target group, to ensure that they can be easily applied and disseminated in formal, non-formal and in-formal education. The project has two main objectives: improving the knowledge and know-how of civic society association actors regarding sustainability and enabling association actors and target groups to adopt socially and culturally sustainable practices in their overall activities and operations, and improving the knowledge and know-how of target groups on how to improve education that carries out cultural and social sustainability. The expected impact among the participating associations and individuals and target groups altogether is the permanent and ground-breaking change in action and strategy levels. Especially in the adult education field and NGO level the result is strengthened active citizenship and social inclusion, extended understanding and know-how about social and cultural sustainability as a whole and practical understanding on how to implement all this in various learning environments.
The objectives were based on the pedagogical viewpoints and transformative learning. Permanent change was the goal. We wanted to improve the knowledge and know-how of civic society association actors regarding sustainability and enabling the target groups to adopt socially and culturally sustainable practices in their overall activities and operations. The other objective was to improve the knowledge and know-how of target groups on how to improve education that carries out cultural and social sustainability. We wanted to develop adult teaching with versatile themes of sustainability and get the change to practice and to develop new ways to approach sustainability. Outside of the main target groups educators, facilitators and coordinators, by the guidance of them, we wanted to achieve an increased competence of critical reflection on one's own thoughts and attitudes. To identify implementation possibilities of sustainability as a resource and guideline in different contexts and the sense of individual’s possibilities of local and global participation and new insights on how to perform active citizenship.
A global awareness of sustainability increased during last years. However, most of the people perceive it is just ecological sustainability. The other dimensions of sustainability have got less attention. In this project we wanted to diversify the concept of sustainability, how it produces active citizenship. We wanted to draw attention especially to social and cultural sustainable development, because just a little research has been done on social and cultural sustainability. Although the project’s main focus was on social and cultural sustainability, it is important that development is ecologically sustainable and socially equitable in all aspects of sustainability. We wanted to bring the thoughts of eco-social approach to education. A broad concept of well-being, starting from a combination of ecological and social perspectives. We carried out a needs analysis , which inquired understanding of sustainable development. People were mainly aware just of ecological sustainability. The chosen module format of the Intellectual Outputs is also based on the questionnaire. The answers revealed peer learning co-operation and workshops as the most preferred studying modes.