Background:
The world population is aging causing changes in the society as whole. Aging is a global phenomenon. Senior citizens represent an important and ever growing part of our European population, economy and society. Irrespective of the current economic crisis, this poses manifold questions as to how member states can best ensure that these citizens are socially included, actively engaged and can fully enjoy all their rights.
Although many senior citizens enjoy good health, aging often brings difficulties preventing older citizens from accessing goods and services and living independently. Ensuring accessibility for all is both a question of fundamental rights and crucial to making the most of the potential that senior citizens have in social and economic terms. Adult learning provides a means of up skilling or re-skilling those affected by unemployment and age, as well as makes an important contribution to social inclusion, active citizenship and personal development
The Europe 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth acknowledges LLL and skills development as key elements in response to the current economic crisis, to demographic aging and to the broader economic and social strategy of the EU. The economic crisis has highlighted the major role which adult learning can play in achieving the Europe 2020 targets, by enabling adults – in particular the low-skilled, senior citizens and older workers – to improve their ability to adapt to changes in the labor market, the family and the society.
Five partners form the consortium which is formed based on the need to upgrade their own lifelong learning provision for the vulnerable group of adults, the disadvantaged senior citizens, who are urging for a digital inclusion in the technological driven world we live in. The recent Council’s Recommendations such as the New Skills Agenda for Europe and the New pathways for adults emphasise the importance of re-skilling and up-skilling opportunities for all groups of adults. This is particularly important as population is not static, anymore. Migration created new challenges and new needs, as adults have to be offered opportunities to identify, record, assess and validate their skills in order to proceed to employment.
The consortium proposes to join the efforts of MS to offer innovative, targeted and high quality lifelong learning opportunities to senior citizens for the acquisition of digital skills, which will support in a systemic way active aging, access, social inclusion, participation and personal development though the use of the digitalized learning eco-system to be developed, as well as through the e-services, e-governance, e-participation and e-communication provided in each partner country
The target group are disadvantaged senior citizens living in 5 different countries representing both geographical differences as well as cultural differences who will be involved in a series of lifelong learning activities aiming to acquire essential digitals skills need for the society and the labour market. The consortium plans to produce 5 main intellectual outputs which can be transfered and re-used by other target groups thus promoting sustainability and transferability of products.
