Through the Family Footprints project, partners aimed to address the dual transition towards digitalisation and sustainability that were sweeping across Europe, by developing comprehensive educational resources tailored to the needs of families and adult learners. The implementation of the Family Footprints project was driven by a clear set of objectives aimed at achieving meaningful and sustainable outcomes for adult learners, families, and adult educators. At the commencement of the project, partners identified a pressing need to ensure that all members of society could upskill to avoid being left behind by the digital and sustainable transitions. Specifically, the project aimed to bridge the Family Digital Divide by ensuring that all family members, regardless of age, had basic digital competence to manage their digital footprint, and to support families and communities in embracing a more sustainable way of living to address the climate crisis. As such, what we aimed to achieve through this project was to empower families in our communities and across Europe to develop their digital and climate literacies, manage their digital and carbon footprints, and support the dual transition of Europe.
The Family Footprints project partners came together to apply for this project as a response to pressing local needs and educational gaps identified within partner communities. The decision to apply for the project stemmed from partners identifying a need to support local communities to come to terms with European policies and strategies, which have been put in place to support the dual or twin transition of Europe to a more sustainable and digital society. Specifically, through the materials we developed in this project, we have linked to the European policies - European Green Deal, Europe Fit for a Digital Age and the DigComp Framework, to build the climate and digital literacies of whole families. We took a family learning approach because we saw the family unit as an ideal microcosm of our local communities, with so many different age groups in one family. As such, that through one high-quality, targeted family learning intervention, we have been able to reach parents (adult learners), grandparents (senior adult learners), and children, teenagers and young adults; and to support each of these European citizens to develop their digital and climate literacies, through high-quality curricula and age-appropriate digital resources.