"During the last years, and especially from 2016, when this project was requested, the problems of adult migrant persons to achieve a real inclusion in Europe have worsened, according to the latest studies published by renowned international agencies and institutions. The increase of racist speech and extremist movements, added to processes of de-structuration of the EU has impacted the possibilities for real inclusion of migrant and refugee persons.All of this makes the results obtained after two-and-a-half years of hard work by the entities participating in the project ""TERRITORIAL LANGUAGES AS AN EMPLOYABILITY TOOL FOR ADULT PEOPLE"" even more important as a mechanism to build a richer, stronger, and more diverse EU. These materials began to be spread, as advised in the Mid-term Evaluation, in the first Multiplier Event held in November 2017 among multipliers, adult education centers, political authorities, and the beneficiary group itself, and started to yield good results, showing that they are an effective tool to achieve the inclusion of adult migrants.These migrant adults (from outside Europe, from other EU countries, or refugees fleeing from war in Africa and Asia) face multiple difficulties to access the labor market, among which is their limited knowledge of the languages of their foster region, which usually derives in severe barriers for their social integration and the creation of solidarity networks that make it easier to find a job. Thus, social and educational integration in their foster region has proven essential to increase the chances of finding a job. The knowledge of territorial languages can facilitate social integration, and is a curricular advantage that increases the employability of adult people.In order to achieve this, we have created during 30 months a high amount of results and materials that are reaching all the proposed objectives. The high quality Intellectual Output that has been one of the main points of the work done is highlighted among them: the MULTILINGUAL VIRTUAL E-LEARNING ENVIRONMENT FOR MINORITY LANGUAGES FOR INCLUSION AND EMPOYABILITY. This Intellectual Output is a virtual environment that proposes several digital tools for the inclusion and training of adult people through the learning of the minority languages of the participating regions, designed to increase the employability of adult persons.Along with this Intellectual Output, an exchange of experiences among the entities has also been carried out, plus multiple campaigns to promote the wealth and value of the cultural heritage of Europe and the regions it contains, and a guide of learning methods of minority languages for migrant persons (a guide that establishes educative methods using ICTs adapted to learning).In order to do this, we have held 4 Transnational Meetings that have allowed us to exchange good practices in innovative adult education, language education, the use of ICTs in the learning process, and their influence in the increase of employability. Virtual meetings to coordinate and distribute teamwork have also been held, as well as several national activities for the creation of results, diffusion activities, and three Multiplier Events to spread and increase the impact of the Intellectual Outputs of the project.All of this has been done through a collaborative methodology in which the distribution of tasks and responsibilities, and the exchange of the best innovative practices between the partners was done according to the principles of participation and equity, trying to benefit the most from the experience of each partner in all the areas of work. During all the time that the project has been active, but also after its end, a strong strategic partnership has been built, comprised by entities of very diverse sectors (companies, cultural associations, public institutions, educational entities…) that have improved their networking capabilities to implement an effective action for the training of adult persons that increases their employability and inclusion through the use of multilingualism, digital competences, and the benefits of ICTs. This is an effective work that will continue in the future, increasing the impact and developing new projects in diverse areas.We are achieving an important impact at the regional and European scale, especially thanks to the implication of ELEN (who represents 42 linguistic communities in 21 European states, and has a consultant status for the European Parliament, the European Council, the United Nations, UNESCO, and OSCE)."

Language learning plays a prominent role among the competences that will help to better equip people for the labor market and to take full advantage of the opportunities available; it enriches your life, provides new ideas, exercises your mind, and allows you to benefit from the world’s cultural diversity, obtain scholarships for postgraduate studies, work in transnational companies, and of course express yourself in an understandable way to others, thus increasing social relations.This is especially true when we refer to minority languages from many regions or countries of the EU. It is proven that the use of the languages of each territory provides to its students -especially those with linguistic barriers such as migrants- curricular advantages that favor their social inclusion. Knowing the language of the territory, added to a better culture and the development of skills, is a differential fact that can guarantee a full social inclusion, especially for migrant students.Also the use of minority languages as an educational vehicular language also enhances educational results and the culture and cultural heritage of the country, therefore promoting Europe’s wealth, whose cultural diversity is one of its greatest values. However, as experts have stated, these unofficial languages are facing a serious threat to survival if they are not able to make a technological leap to digitalization. New generations make regular use of communication technologies that only use majority languages, so it is necessary to provide useful linguistic resources for the technological development of other languages to avoid their disappearance.In this regard, the European Parliament has recently approved a motion in favor of linguistic equality in the digital age, with the objective of promoting linguistic technologies for co-official languages.Many regional and national governments across Europe are also increasingly aware of this and have understood how to safeguard their linguistic heritage through the access to the digital plane, while at the same time enhancing the positive educational values they entail for learning and inclusion. Thus, they are promoting changes in the educational systems of secondary schools to promote multilingualism, the use of minority languages as vehicular language, and their technological leap. However, the implementation of these curricular and educational changes is often carried out in isolation without the help or experiences of other countries, and teachers cannot find open educational materials to use in their lessons.The entities that make up this partnership are aware that (foundations, regional goverments, cultural entities and companies) , in order to successfully implement these changes, it is essential to adapt to the new social context that Europe is living, to involve ourselves in many different sectors and to contribute together to educational innovation.EUROPE OF LANGUAGES NETWORK: TEACHER TRAINNING FOR INCLUSION THROUGH MINORITY LANGUAGES is a project aimed at connecting regional governments, cultural entities, youth associations, and educational centers in Europe, with the aim of promoting the technological and educational leap of minority languages, thus facilitating the implementation of multilingual systems and equipping school teachers with the necessary innovative digital educational resources.This will be achieved through the creation of two high-quality Intellectual Outputs:- COURSE FOR TEACHERS TO IMPLEMENT MINORITY LANGUAGES AS EDUCATIONAL VEHICULAR LANGUAGES. A specific course for secondary and primary teachers to use innovative methodologies using minority languages of the region to promote inclusion and reach educative objectives of the students. - DIGITAL OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES (OERs) FOR SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHERS THROUGH MINORITY LANGUAGES (O2) that will train teachers while also help them carry out a learning process for their students of minority languages through 3.0 education in their classrooms.Also the project will create many tangible results, emphasising the creation of a VIRTUAL COMMUNITY OF TEACHERS FOR THE DIGITALIZATION OF MINORITY LANGUAGES IN SECONDARY EDUCATION. A collaborative web space designed for and by secondary school teachers from schools in regions with minority languages. These results will be developed through 24 months of work, 4 Transnational Meetings (Valencia, Dublin, Rennes, Valencia), multiple activities for the creation of materials, pilot tests in teacher training centers and secondary schools, and a large multiplier event in Valencia in 2022.Thanks to the involvement of educational centers, teacher associations, and regional governments in Europe, we hope to achieve high-quality impactful results that can be implemented by many European regions and will facilitate educational improvement in secondary education, a greater compatibility in these countries’ curricula, and a greater inclusion of students thanks to minority

The EU is facing a demographic crisis, with a foreseen return to job growth across Europe over the coming years, in part due to improvement in the economic outlook, coupled with a record number of asylum applications. For this reason, increased opportunities need to be created, by providing a different route to success for the future workforce, and due to rising numbers of unemployed young adults, especially among migrants and refugees, it is imperative that a new way is found to change the downward spiral.EU states can benefit from the influx of refugees. They will be a necessity in the years to come, to help fill this growing gap between young able workers and an ageing workforce. However, this will not come on its own; a clearly defined strategy for successful integration needs to be in place to meet these objectives.To address this issue, the project created a platform for continuous language improvement through CLIL, e. g. a method of teaching a second language as a medium of classroom instruction. Through this method, unemployed, low skilled migrants and refugees can study the subjects of their real interest, i.e. cultural adaptation and work-related content. The goal of the project is to broaden the knowledge of groups of low skilled, adult migrants and refugees, in terms of civic participation and basic value orientation of the hosting society – all this while improving their knowledge of the host country language.The project includes partners from 4 countries; Denmark, Portugal, Czech Republic, and Ireland. The consortium is made up of partners from NGOs active in the areas of integration, inclusion and social work, companies involved in integration, education materials and content developers, learning platform developers, teaching and training of unemployed refugees, experts in CLIL method, and teaching/training organisations.The consortium developed materials mainly for language schools, teaching the host country language to refugees, and companies interested in participating in an integration program. The materials consisted of a WeR1 project handbook, including theories on integration, pattern breaking, CLIL, and TBL. To create a bridge between theory and praxis, a toolkit coupled with audiovisual learning scenarios was also created. These materials provide teachers and trainers with ready to use tools and real life illustrations of how to use the methods in the classroom or training. The tools are used to create learning units for refugees and migrants, where work related language with built in language scaffolding can be studied. Finally, the consortium also produced a course guide. The course guide assists teachers and trainers and other interested parties in the running of WeR1 training courses for exploitation purposes. During the project, the consortium ran pilot workshops, the Multiplier Events for 30 people, and host events, where teachers/trainers were invited to participate, and make use of our materials in their own praxis. A final conference also took place, where professionals from these fields were invited, along with policy makers and other interested parties. In the total, 66 people attended the Final Conference and showed their interest in all our materials. With this project and the results that were produced, we wish to develop the necessary basic labour market language skills, inter-cultural competence and life skills needed to adapt to a European labour market and society of the 21st century. We created tools for teachers, trainers involved in training refugee and migrant groups to successfully enter the job market. Our project doesn't only teach a language, but create a bridge between language, culture and work. The potential long term effects will be creating a methodology and approach for municipalities, language schools and companies to make use of, for successful integration strategies. We envisage that using the CLIL method to teach work related language, will increase successful and faster integration into the labour market. Including companies in our target groups also create an incentive for companies to open their doors and create opportunities for unemployed refugees and migrants.

In order to maintain a minority language it is crucial that speakers are able to use it as frequently and freely as possible. However, in many situations minority language speakers have been observed to adopt self-censoring attitudes where they avoid using their own language and switch to the majority language. This happens even when their counterpart is perfectly able to understand the minority language and when it is officially recognized and widely used in the local area.Assertiveness is the quality of being self-assured and confident without being aggressive. It is a learnable skill and mode of communication. When applied to languages it refers to training people to express themselves in their own language while feeling calm and self-assured, and acts to help an individual who may be uncertain if their counterparts are speakers of the same language.The purpose of the LISTEN project is to train speakers of a minority language (be it historically rooted in a territory, or brought recently by effect of migration) to act on their behavior and modify it by adopting strategies of linguistic assertiveness. The main output of the project will be a format for Linguistic Assertiveness Workshops that can be adapted and localized to different languages and socio-linguistic micro-and macro-contexts. The project will explore the cases of four languages (Welsh, Irish, Frisian and Hungarian) and different categories of speakers (educators, civil servants, youth, and migrants).Additional teaching materials that will be provided are: a MOOC on language assertiveness, webinars, a handbook, and audiovisual and textual material that will be released on an open license.The format will be illustrated and put into operation by conducting two series of workshops that will be held in Wales, Ireland, Friesland and Romania. Because the workshops will be held in different language communities they will be able to gather a wide variety of needs, situations, and linguistic prejudices.The LISTEN Consortium is composed of the University of Valencia (Spain, LISTEN coordinator), the University of Cluj-Napoca in Romania, a research department in computational linguistics (CNR-ILC, Italy), and NGOs working for the protection and promotion of Europe's regional minority and endangered languages (ELEN, France, Afuk, the Netherlands, Conradh na Gaelige, Ireland, IAITH, Wales, UK).In the short term LISTEN will have an impact on its target groups who will learn behavioral strategies that can positively impact on their linguistic habits. They will be trained to apply these strategies to all aspect of their public and private life no matter how stressful and discouraging the environment is.It is important to note how the skills acquired through LISTEN, by instructors on the one side and by speakers on the other, can be applicable to any language in any situation where a language is minoritised. The LISTEN methodology has the potential to be applicable not only to lesser-used languages, but also to more widely used ones, and can be used whenever a situation of friction arises and a person or a group of people feels the need to maintain his/her language when confronted with unfavourable external factors.At the societal level LISTEN provides an invaluable instrument to understand linguistic prejudices and to take concrete actions that can help deal with them so as to contribute to a more tolerant and inclusive society.