One of the five Europe 2020 headline targets is related to social inclusion and consists of lifting at least 20 million people in the European Union (EU) from the risk of poverty or social exclusion by 2020. According to the latest Eurostat data available, in 2018 21.7 % of the EU population — or some 109 million people — was at risk of poverty or social exclusion, that constitute a transversal element for disadvantaged adults. In the European Social Policy context, the term “disadvantaged” refers to a particular group of people with inadequate learning resources due to limited or restricted access to learning provisions. Ensuring that Europe’s citizens keep developing their knowledge, skills and competence throughout their lives is vital for employment, competitiveness and innovation, and for each individual to develop and shape one´s life. This is the challenge for adult education: be able to promote and support lifelong learning for everyone, above all for people in disadvantaged situations, since exclusion from lifelong learning is a substantial deficit which separates individuals from the civil society. This approach has to be systemic and consider the person in its whole, while very often the adult education organisations tend to tackle a single aspect of the disadvantage. On this pillars we have built the project PRINT, that aims support the exchange of good practices to build a systemic-integrated model to support disadvantaged adults to make a step forward. To reach this main aim, the project involves 6 adult organisations from Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Portugal and Latvia that will promote the exchange of good practices they have already developed in intercultural learning, digital learning, intergenerational learning, promotion of employability, active participation and supervision with the intention of creating a systemic-integrated model to work with disadvantaged adults. The project consists in 3 transnational meetings, 8 short term joint staff meeting and local activities. The project involves around 70 educators from the staff organisations and a number of Associated Partners. The role which adult education can play in supporting an ameliorated society is well documented but it is important to keep innovative: adult education must deploy the best practice to fulfil its inclusive mission. For all these reasons and the context described, the specific objectives of PRINT are: - to explore further the potential of adult education and lifelong learning for disadvantaged adults - to exchange specific good and effective practices developed by each participating organisation in the educational process with disadvantaged adults (intergenerational learning, intercultural learning, digital learning, active participation, supervision, employability development) - to adapt the good practices learnt to the peculiarity of the organisations’ contexts and to implement them - to focus on the needs of supervision to prevent educator from burnout - to increase the competence of a number of adult educators in supporting disadvantage adult education outreach - to develop a systemic-integrated model based on the good practices learnt from each other, that considers adults in disadvantaged situation holistically, and thus can support adult educators to address them as complex and complete persons and not as a disadvantage’s personification
By implementing PRINT, all partners wanted to achieve the following: -to further explore the potential of adult education and lifelong learning for disadvantaged adults. -to exchange specific good and effective practices developed by each participating organisation in the educational process with disadvantaged adults (intergenerational learning, intercultural learning, digital learning, active participation, supervision, employability). -to adapt the good practices learnt to the peculiarity of the organisations’ contexts and to implement them -to focus on the need for supervision to prevent educators from burnout and to spread the importance of supervision practice in education. -to increase the competence of several adult educators in supporting disadvantaged adults in outreach education -to develop a systemic-integrated model based on the good practices learnt from each other, that considers adults in disadvantaged situations holistically, and thus can support adult educators to address them as complex and complete persons and not as a disadvantaged personification.
The PRINT project was conceived under the mutual understanding of all the partners involved that education for disadvantaged adults was a sector that could benefit from innovation and further attention. In 2020, at the project's inception, social inclusion was considered an important element as one of the five Europe 2020 headline targets was related to social inclusion and aimed at lifting at least 20 million people in the European Union (EU) from the risk of poverty or social exclusion by 2020. The 2018 Eurostat data illustrated that 21.7 % of the EU population, or some 109 million people, were at risk of poverty or social exclusion, encompassing an approaching definition of disadvantaged adults. In the European Social Policy context, the term “disadvantaged” refers to a particular group with inadequate learning resources due to limited or restricted access to learning provisions. The project supported the creation of a systemic-integrated model to work with disadvantaged adults to help tackle this.