ECO-IN at the LLLab 2023: local dissemination event

The LLLP’s Lifelong Learning Lab 2023, which took place in Girona on the 26th and 27th of June, brought together education stakeholders, policy makers and civil society representatives. In this context, several workshops took place to explore ideas and disseminate best practices.  

One of the workshops was on key competences for lifelong learning. It created an avenue to explore practices in the promotion of key competences for lifelong learning and success factors for the implementation of activities. To kickstart the conversation, Elisa Gambardella (SOLIDAR Foundation) presented the ECO-IN project.  

The ECO-IN project aimed at identifying and delivering indicators for monitoring successful inclusion practices in schools. One objective was to push forward policy recommendations to boost inclusion and training to prepare all education stakeholders to actively contribute to a system based on inclusive communities.  

The project was showcased as an example of a good practice due to the variety of stakeholders involved, which contributed to its success. Indeed, teachers, school heads, policymakers, parents, families are all at the core of the project as it takes an ecological approach to inclusion.  

After the presentation, the participants were divided into three groups in which open discussions took place, enabling the various stakeholders to share knowledge from their own experiences, thus creating a pool of practices to learn from. Some of the common points consisted of engaging an even larger variety of actors to enhance shared responsibility given the prevailing importance of education. Moreover, the participants identified the need of a community rather than the need of curricula that must be addressed to hone key competences, while also putting trust at the core, both at the individual level and when creating essential networks of trustworthy centers, such as the Prosocial Trust Centers in the ECO-IN project. Last but not least, it is paramount to design a space for adaptability, resilient in the face of fast paced changing societies.