SOLIDAR Foundation’s Education and Lifelong Learning Forum meeting in Brussels

SOLIDAR Foundation’s Education and Lifelong Learning forum (ELF) took place on 20 and 21 December in Brussels.

During the meeting, chaired by John Meinert Jacobsen (AOF Denmark), participants shared their best experiences from 2017 but more importantly the meeting focused on planning the ELF’s activities for the upcoming years. In light of the discussions at the last SOLIDAR Foundation Board meeting, the upcoming activities and meetings will adopt a more bottom-up approach: the meetings will be more decentralised and in synergy with the local activities of SOLIDAR Foundation members in order to showcase best practices and develop realistic proposals streamed from local to European level.

To contribute to the new approach the Citizenship and Lifelong learning Monitor 2017 was launched in the framework of Lifelong Learning Watch. The aim of the monitor is to explore situations at the national level from the point of view of our member organisations. Data will be collected until the end of January 2018 and after that,  an overview report will be produced together with the collected best practices from the field of digital resilience, critical thinking and media literacy which will directly contribute to the ELF’ s work programme.

In line with the discussions at the last meeting in Copenhagen, participants examined the skills needed for the future and the possible angles from which SOLIDAR Foundation can tackle the issue. There was strong agreement that future skills cannot be discussed only in connection with the labour market but also in connection with fair participation in society and access to education. One of the next meetings will look closely at successful training programmes by our members that focus on digital resilience.