The main objective of the project was to design and test a suitable form of education for a disadvantaged group of adults — parents with young children — while offering this target group educational content responding to the ongoing fundamental changes in society. The project aimed to expand the knowledge and skills of a group of 20 parents (of preschool and early school-age children) through in-person weekend sessions combined with webinars in the field of dialogical and collaborative practice and in the area of digitalization and artificial intelligence. The project also aimed to help participants adopt natural pathways for disseminating the acquired know-how from the supported parents further into their natural surroundings and communities. The objective for the applicant organization was to strengthen its capacities and develop a new educational program for its portfolio. From the outset, the project was built on two horizontal principles of Erasmus+: inclusion and digital transformation.
Parents with young children represent a group that is systematically disadvantaged in the lifelong learning system. Logistical barriers (the need to arrange childcare) and economic barriers (one parent being a caregiver and economically inactive) effectively prevent their access to education. At the same time, this group faces fundamental challenges of the modern world: the need to manage stress and uncertainty, build harmonious family environments, and navigate a rapidly changing digital world. Akáda, as an educational organization, perceived this paradox as a call for innovation. Together with our Slovak partner IDP, which has deep expertise in dialogical practice, we applied for a project aimed at designing, testing, and validating a functional format for adult education in the presence of young children. The project thus responded to five key needs of the target group: removing barriers to access to education, coping with VUCA world challenges, developing competencies for digital well-being, intergenerational dialogue, and transferring acquired knowledge to the community.