Capacity-Building in Adult Learning and Education: What regional strategies and tools for success?

The Lifelong Learning Platform hosts the Lifelong Learning Week event annually, and the 2023 edition will be hosted in the week of November 27, attracting a large range of stakeholders invested in lifelong learning. This year, the theme of the event is ‘Key Competences for All: A Lifelong Learning Approach to Skills’. Under the theme, one of the sub-areas of focus is considering key competencies at the system level, including successful policies for transversal competencies for learning and resilient societies.

It is from within this context that EARLALL (European Association of Regional and Local Authorities for Lifelong Learning) and EAEA (the European Association for the Education of Adults) would like to propose a session that incites a debate on the tools and strategies needed to facilitate cooperation between public authorities, Civil Society Organisations and education providers on learning territories.

 
The two organizations have been involved in the Erasmus+ Regional Capacity for Adult Learning and Education (REGALE) project (coordinated by EAEA) and would draw from these experiences to contribute to the debate. The project aims to set up or reinforce networks of adult education organizations and to create synergies with regional/local authorities in order to increase their impact and sustainability. This is being achieved by increasing the partners’ capacity (and of their networks, stakeholders, partners, and members at their level of action) to respond to their challenges, build cooperation structures, and promote an adult education culture in communities, cities, and regions.

As the REGALE project draws to a close, it has become clear that each territory is facing unique demographic issues from a societal and labour-market perspective, which in turn, hinder the capacity of the regions to provide adult education and learning. With this in mind, this debate session hopes to expand upon the opportunities, tools, and strategies for intergenerational learning, mentoring, and on-the-ground exchanges as a means to shift the cultural mindset towards a lifelong learning perspective, creating resilient lifelong learning societies at the regional level.