UP-AEPRO (https://eaea.org/project/up-aepro/?pid=11709) aimed to address the constant need and interest of adult education (AE) trainers and staff to learn more about European developments in adult education and other countries’ systems and innovation. After more than 2 years, the project has effectively contributed to deepen the knowledge and foster the discussion about a recently launched European strategy in adult education: the Upskilling Pathways initiative (UP), which happened through the whole project and culminated with the project IO6 - The Advocacy Toolkit and its final conference/ multiplier event. The initiative, which approved by the European Council in December 2016 within the New Skills Agenda, aimed to tackle the need for basic skills and qualification in Europe through 3 steps: skills assessment; tailored-made learning offer; and validation and recognition of the skills acquired. After 4 years of implementation, the consortium members believe they have managed to contribute for its interim evaluation. The choice of the Upskilling Pathways initiative is due to an advocacy need, because AE providers and organisations (like the partner organisations) have the interest in knowing more about it. Thanks to UP-AEPRO, AE organisations and providers are now more capable in what concerns our advocacy skills and we feel empowered in being involved in the initiative implementation. The project activities managed to involve more than 60 different organisations, in different project phases. The initiative’s three steps will also provided the teams with the opportunity of an enriching deepening and exchange about their organisations’ and members states’ practices. Participants used from each other´s innovations and knowledge and thus the aim of a better professionalisation and quality of adult education staff will be reached. Thus, the project had the following objectives, which were met: - Increase the knowledge about the Upskilling Pathways initiative and other Lifelong Learning policies at the European level - Allow the exchange of innovation across Europe on the Upskilling Pathways initiative related topics - Improve quality, professionalisation and capacity building of AE staff and providers - Support UP-AEPRO learners and partners to develop online learning and introduce ICT tools into their daily work (this was especially useful with the boom of distance learning initiatives during the pandemic) - Increase the intercultural skills of AE trainers and staff - Strengthen the cooperation with peers and policy-makers in their countries and in Europe - Improve the UP initiative implementation at different level by enabling AE trainers and staff (and the organisations for which they work) to be involved The project results were the following: - An online course on the Upskilling Pathways initiative including four innovative modules on the following topics: Policy overview and European Advocacy (IO1), Skills assessment (IO2), Tailored-made offer (IO3) and Validation and recognition (IO4); - Five peer learning sessions (IO5) organised by the learners themselves with the support of the UP-AEPRO partners; - An advocacy toolkit (IO6) - A transnational learning activity (C1-2) - A final conference (ME1) The benefits of the project are already very visible. Thanks to extended and developed competences of educators, the learning provision is now more effective, meaningful and inclusive for all learners. After learning from each other's systems and innovation, trainers and staff are now able to improve their own practice and methodologies, which is fostering the supply of high quality learning opportunities tailored to their needs (low-skilled or low-qualified adults and the UP initiative potential users in particular). More coherent and grass-rooted education policies obtained through the engagement of trainers and staff into the UP initiative implementation, lead to an increase of participation (especially of disadvantaged learners) and the reaching of the ET2020 goals. An enhanced technical and ICT skills of trainers was both inspiring for them, enriching for their future learners and very valuable for the project sustainability. The fact that 2020 was the year where all the teaching/ learning methods were transformed due to the pandemic, made more visible the efficiency of our distance learning UP-AEPRO course and methodologies. Due to their online nature, the project outputs are open, free and highly sustainable. Partners are now working on a sound and effective dissemination and exploitation plan to reach the highest number of AE trainers and staff and thus maximise their impact. With a relatively low budget and in only two years, the project contributed to a better quality and an increased innovation in adult education that will support the progress towards a truly European area of lifelong learning.

By analysing tools and methodologies in different European countries and proposing solutions from the civil society perspective, this successful project contributed to reducing the fragmentation of validation systems in Europe. It showed possible ways forward to make validation systems in Europe more inclusive and accessible, explored the best practices and policy strategies for validation for the disadvantaged, contributed to an exchange of tools, procedures and experiences among validation stakeholders in the EU and beyond.To be in line with the European Council Recommendation of 2012, Member States should have validation systems in place by 2018. The AVA consortium initiated this project to support Member States in their work towards this objective, acknowledging that they were facing significant challenges (and in some cases even resistance) while putting in place such systems and that a major role could be played by adult education providers and stakeholders. In the first project phase, the consortium drafted and promoted a survey addressing adult education providers, validation arrangement providers and analysed its results. Both the survey and the analysis had very positive feedback from validation professionals and had been instrumental in drafting important key questions and collect inspiring best practices. These were also the starting point in preparing the AVA Action Plan, which was drafting in the second phase of the project and represent probably the milestone of the AVA consortium work. The plan provides key messages, concrete examples and suggestions targeted at both policy makers and adult education organizations. It is available in three languages and freely downloadable from the project website: http://www.eaea.org/en/projects/eaea-coordinated-projects/ava.html The partners also produced five articles on validation practices and their impact as well as developed an event methodology that allowed the smooth and fruitful running of expert seminar but could be also used by other stakeholders in the organisation of similar events. Three events were organised in the framework of the project. A jour fixe was held in Vienna on 13 October 2015. It had the purpose to present the initial survey results to a wider public and discuss the main challenges arisen in the analysis. An expert seminar took place in Oslo on the 1-2 February 2016 in order to debate the main themes and outcomes of the survey and collect recommendations for drafting the action plan. A policy debate at the Economic and Social Committee attended by more than 60 participants (Brussels, 29 June 2016,) was instrumental in presenting the AVA intellectual outputs to key validation stakeholders and discuss the Action Plan.The consortium was composed of 6 organisations: the European Association for the Education of Adults (BE), the Nordic Network for Adult Learning (NO), the Association of Austrian Adult Education Centres (AT), the Innovation and Social Development institute - Kerigma (PT), the Dutch Platform for International Adult Learning (NL) and the Euro Adult Education Association (RO). Partners had wide-ranging and long-standing experience on validation as well as broad and established networks of contacts. This contributed to making this project a success both in terms of quality of results and of quantity of people reached.The AVA main target groups are adult education providers as well as national and European policy-makers dealing with validation systems. Participants in the project, as well as the wider adult education community, learned from each other, gained an insight into different validation tools, developed different approaches to support disadvantaged learners, proposed possible solutions to face the fragmentation of systems, built partnerships between providers and sectors and deepened their understanding of existing European policies for validation. The consortium also provided more practice-based evidence for better policy-making on the topic. By raising awareness of validation and making it more inclusive, the project had also a positive impact on individual learners and the society as a whole. According to the AVA consortium, validation is one of the key tools and components for lifelong learning and thus should be considered as a right. All citizens should be able to access validation arrangements and get their competences acquired outside the formal system recognized. This will allow them to move one step up in their personal lives and careers, increase people’s motivation for lifelong learning and bridge the labour market gaps between the job supply and demand.We believe that the materials and outputs will remain valid and will be used at least until 2018, the deadline for the implementation of national validation systems. The consortium is deeply committed to exploiting them on European and national levels both in their advocacy and daily work on validation.

"Research has shown that several target groups, including adult learners and adult education professionals, can best be reached in a journalistic manner. Therefore journalistic means, such as journalistic articles, campaigns, online media and mass media play an important role in raising the knowledge and awareness about learning as an adult. However, adult education institutions often do not have the professional staff experienced in media and journalistic activities. Adult educators do not know and are not trained on how to go about it and how to transfer the message in a journalistic way. This is the first project to address journalistic competence as an important professional competence of adult education staff. While some universities offer studies in adult education, we know that nevertheless there is a high number of adult education staff who does not have formal training in adult education and in particular in journalistic work. Therefore the main objective for the project is to increase the professionalization and quality within the adult education sector, with special focus on information work of adult education staff. Adult education actors must improve their competencies in communication in particular with the actors of other countries, backgrounds and cultures. The foundation and starting point of this strategic partnership is the ""European InfoNet Adult Education"" Grundtvig network (2005-2015) which was a comprehensive information portal on adult education in Europe, based on professional journalistic contributions from correspondents all over Europe. Based on this experience, the consortium believes that disseminating information and reporting on trends, project/research results, developments, best practice and news in the area of adult all across Europe is needed.Therefore the main OBJECTIVES of the project are to:1. Enhance adult educator’s competences through better training and understanding of - how to write journalistic articles for print and online media- how to report about adult education in mass media - how to increase adult educators’ competences in writing about adult education for a European audience - how to write for readers living in an another geographical, cultural, political and educational environment- how to write articles that are relevant and understandable for the target groups- how to write articles for EPALE 2. Awareness raising for and promoting of Adult Education in Europe through:- developing trainings and tools on how to improve people's awareness and knowledge on adult learning, which means an increase in the lifelong learning benchmark through journalistic activities - reaching and informing a wider European audience about adult education through journalistic means - professionalization of adult education staff on journalistic ways of working- providing incentives and expertise for the adult education community to initiate more journalistic activities on adult learning - awareness raising measures about the high numbers of persons with low literacy levels- improvement of the level of key competences and transversal skills of adult education staff- Enhancing ICT uptake in work of the adult education -sharing best practice examples on how to inform about low literacy levels among adults- exchanging experiences on how to reach disadvantaged learners (in particular with low literacy levels)- informing about and motivating national, regional and local policy makers to invest in LLLThe project developed five products:1. Curriculum “Public Relations and Journalism for Adult Educators. Six steps to make adult education more visible in the media”, 26 pages, seven working documents about the topics: Materials for Trainers, Basic Skills, Interview, Literacy, How to contribute to EPALE, PR, Influencer/Social Media, one Powerpoint presentation (48 slices). Languages: English, German, French, Portuguese, Romanian and extra in Danish and Dutch (not in application). 2. Simulation game: “Development of a regional project and network to push basic skills like literacy and numeracy OR Let them know about Basic Skills. Setting up a network and developing a communication/PR strategy to inform people about”, 11 pages. Language: English3. Webinars: “The power of communication: why adult educators need to communicate more and better” (1), “The unreachables in adult education? How to reach the ‘unreachable’ vulnerable adults with adult education?” (2) and “Results of the LEK project curriculum work”. Duration of each webinar: ca 45 min. 4. Handbook webinar, 19 pages5. Brochure: “Adult Educator’s Guide to Communication”, 36 pages. Languages: German, French, English, Finnish, Dutch, Portugese, Romanian, Norwegian.LEK published the material the homepage: www.let-europe-know.eu as OER material."