EPALE Community Conference 2021 - Workshop: Boosting outreach through partnership-building in order to promote the provision of adult basic skills

Putting efficient outreach campaigns in place in order to promote participation in adult learning has always been challenging, especially for adults with low qualifications who have often had negative experiences with formal education. Initiatives tend to be expensive, requiring multiple communication channels to successfully reach the target group. This interactive workshop adopts a new approach by proposing outreach activities as opportunities for aligning forces with local and global partners in order to promote adult learning and basic skills programmes. Guest speakers will present long-term initiatives and systems with a broader scope with partnerships for adult learning in general and basic skills as well.

The workshop will address the following questions:

• What are the benefits of outreach partnerships?

• How can we use broader national and global initiatives to build successful outreach partnerships?

Karin Küßner is head of the Contact Point of the National Decade for Literacy and Basic Skills (NCP), located at the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training in Bonn. The NCP has the task to support stakeholder and practitioners in the field of literacy and basic skills to develop and promote sustainable concepts to address adults with difficulties in reading and writing and to disseminate good practice of learning opportunities. Furthermore, the NCP cooperates with Ministries, Partner of the national Decade and a scientific advisory board.

Balázs Németh is a researcher on European adult and lifelong learning policy development and comparative adult education. He is an associate professor and reader in Adult Learning and Education at the University of Pécs and a founding member of the Hungarian Universities Lifelong Learning Network (MELLearN).