In Germany in recent years many attempts have been made to provide better learning opportunities for illiterate and functional
illiterate adults.
The federal province of Lower Saxony has created a network of “Regional Basic Education Centres” (in German shortly: RGZ). Rather than being separate institutions, these centres are sub-units of existing adult education providers. On a project base they get extra financing from the provincial budget. They cooperate in order to provide more and better learning offers for the functional illiterate. Eight RGZ are operating at the moment, typically based in larger cities. They develop initiatives to enable and motivate citizens to engage in learning activities. We will build upon this experience. But more target-group-specific approaches are needed. Creating and testing them is the aim of MobileBE.
Other important initiatives in Germany include the “ABC-Projekt” Oldenburg, the “AlphaPortal” in the neighbouring province of Rhineland-Palatinate and various online offers for illiterate adults (see a good selection at
http://alpha.rlp.de/g5421). Besides, there are numerous smaller initiatives who try to tackle isolated problems. Presenting the best of them in a collection of case studies is MobileBE’s Output 1.
Erasmus+
A search in the Erasmus+ project database with 3998 projects brought a list 83 of projects about literacy. Most of them focus certain methods (“Autonomous Literacy Learners: Sustainable Results”, or “Family Literacy Works”) or certain homogeneous target groups (“Winning Engagement - Language Clubs & Migrant Education”, “Teddy bears in Pairs- e-Learning with Grandchildren”)
More interesting in the context of MobileBE are
- “Skills Innovation Training” (2016-1-UK01-KA204-024267): involving people in IT-training who usually wouldn’t.
- “Skills for Inclusion - SK.IN” (2016-1-IT02-KA204-024423): has a wide range of target groups and tries to involve them in grouporientedprocesses.
As these projects just began operating, results are yet to come.
A number of projects in the European adult education arena have been carried out to collect and publish information on innovative
examples of outreach methods. There are publications available such as:
- “Inventory of outreach strategies to enable people to go one step up” (2015)
- “Outreach Empowerment Diversity: Collection, Presentation and Analysis of Good Practice Examples from Adult Education Leading towards an Inclusive Society” (2013)
- “Europe Widening Access to Learning Opportunities – Eurydice Report Adult and Training” (2015)
