The project had four main objectives. Firstly, our objective was to develop innovative pedagogical material, both offline and online, that could be used to help adult learners, as well as to allow adult educators and counsellors to develop their skills. Secondly, our aim was to improve our understanding regarding the similarities and differences in EU countries with respect to guidance and counselling practices. Thirdly. our objective was to improve the skills and competences of our own staff, when it comes to guidance and counselling, and to improve their ability to operate on a European wide level. Fourthly, we aimed to provide adult learners, especially those with fewer opportunities, with the opportunity for participating in project activities relevant to their own future plans, and for learning about guidance and counselling.
We applied for this project since, according to our needs analysis, there was a need for helping adult learners expand their ideas and plans for the future, and for encouraging them to set higher goals for themselves. We found that guidance and counselling often directs adult learners towards more or less pre-determined future goals. We therefore concluded that there was a need to develop guidance and counselling in such a way that it would be better suited for helping adult learners to discover their true hopes and wishes for the future, instead of merely pointing them towards some career path that might seem easy to achieve. Besides developing guidance and counselling in a hope-based direction, we also identified a need at our organisations for developing the competences of our guidance and counselling staff. The staff at our organisations were already highly skilled at offering counselling for achieving pre-determined goals, such as finding a new job or a study path, but we recognized that there was a need to develop the competences of our own staff in a way that would allow them to facilitate freer and deeper self-reflection for the learners, and to motivate them to contnue to develop their goals and pursue their dreams.