How to increase effectiveness of the adult education strategies: the DIMA project

Looking at the latest statistics, it appears urgent to increase adults’ participation in education and training, enhance basic skills for disadvantaged groups as well as upskill or re-skill unemployed people, especially young adults. To do so, it is important to understand which kind of mechanisms are in place, to investigate how they are perceived by providers and policy-makers as well as to find efficient ways to adjust them to improve the impact and quality of policies.

Learning from each other

“European and national policy makers in the field of adult education, public and private educational stakeholders, research centres, social partners, NGOs, and other relevant associations will be involved in the DIMA project to progress on these challenges,” tells EAEA Project Officer Francesca Operti, who is in charge of the project at EAEA. “Research demonstrates that only coherent and participative strategies are effective on the long term.”

The implementation of the project at a transnational level will enable partner counties to learn from each other. The project will seek to highlight examples of good practices and also, through in-depth analysis activities (such as workshops or peer learning activities) the partner organisations will benefit from each other’s experiences, policies and know-how.

Share your needs with DIMA consortium

The DIMA kick-off meeting was held in Nicosia, Cyprus on 9-10 November 2015. The first two outputs – national and comparative state of the art report as well as the providers’ and policy-makers’ needs assessment –are already being prepared by the consortium. The partners, based in Slovenia, Ireland, Cyprus and Slovakia, will also soon launch a call for interest in their countries and at the EU level to collect contributions through questionnaires and interviews. If you would like to participate, please contact Francesca Operti.

Text: Francesca OpertiPhotos: DIMA project, www.gotcredit.com