Main goal of the project was to support the development of social solidarity economy (SSE) via the development of alternative educational approaches especially in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), by widening and promoting the offer of alternative soft skills educational programmes for adults and strengthening the cooperation and networking of trainers and activists. In order to achieve this main goal we agreed on the following objectives: 1) supporting the development of SSE in CEE by equipping trainers, facilitators, organizers and activists in the SSE field in soft skills. 2) strengthening the cooperation and knowledge about SSE by supporting the networking of trainers, facilitators, organizers and activists in the SSE field. 3) enabling the bottom-up participation of trainers, facilitators, organizers and activists in activities supporting transformation of economy by developing their communication, organizing and campaigning skills. 4) developing innovative and specialized educational tools for the trainers, facilitators, organizers and activists to be utilized in education about SSE in CEE.
Based on experiences from our previous work, internal discussions in the organisations and feedback we collected from our trainers, activists, community leaders and other participants in the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary, we conducted the in-depth analysis of the needs of all of our target groups. Thanks to this analysis, we discovered that across all target groups there is a strong need to acquire better competence in soft skills and related methods and techniques of non-violent communication, participatory decision-making, discussion facilitation and moderation as well and large-scale public events organization, with the specific emphasis on democratic and inclusive methodologies. Project partners staff members expressed the need of participating in an internal training in soft skills for trainers, facilitators and organizers. They want to expand and strengthen their expertise, share experience, knowledge, best practice, create network and build a basis for developing and piloting the training modules.