BLended Adult learning for the Social-ecological Transition Erasmus Project

Project Title

BLended Adult learning for the Social-ecological Transition

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Civic engagement / responsible citizenship; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; Environment and climate change

Project Summary

CONTEXT & BACKGROUND
The project has been designed with the following perspectives in mind:
• The widely agreed need for massive levels of transformative change to achieve a sustainable low carbon future
• The development of good practice in transformative learning
• The relevance of transformative learning to behaviour change in this context, for individuals and communities
• The emergence of blended learning methods and systems, which can combine the best aspects of digital learning (e.g. massive affordable accessibility) and experiential learning (deep engagement, inward and outward transformation)

OBJECTIVES
Our specific objectives are to:
1) Provide a context for adult educators to improve their competences in delivering blended transformative learning for civic engagement in community-led initiatives.
2) Increase reach and improve access, quality, attractiveness and coordination of educational delivery of transformative adult education initiatives across Europe that are supporting the social-ecological transition.
3) Identify, pool, encourage and spread related social and educational innovations.
4) exploit results of other related EU projects.
Achieving these objectives aims to bring about massive personal and community-led change over time by supporting people to engage actively in the socio-ecological transition in response to the Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Climate Agreement and related goals.

PARTICIPANTS
15 people will engage in core BLAST project meetings, with 250 in-person attendees of multiplier events, and at least as many predicted on-line participants, the target being many more. Through dissemination activities across the partnership’s extensive networks, the objective is that the beneficiaries of the BLAST project outputs beyond the life of the project will be many thousands.
The participants in the BLAST project is composed of a mix of people representing bigger networks of community-led initiatives and smaller adult education providers.
They have complementary domains of expertise (such as regenerative design, community resilience, cosmopolitan communication, or social innovation) and have prior long-term collaborative engagement with each other (e.g. through ECOLISE), and more recent new linkages.

ACTIVITIES
The projects activities are to produce a set of 4 inter-related Intellectual Outputs, linked to a set of Training and Multiplier events that are designed to generate deep and long lasting benefits for the Community of Practice and the wider partnerships, network and collaborations that ReLeaP partners are engaged with. The project activities also include online and Transnational Project meetings through which partners will progress the tasks to deliver the project outputs, project evaluation, and extensive dissemination to ensure wide and ongoing take-up of the project’s outputs.

METHODOLOGY: BLENDED LEARNING AND COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE
Blended learning can overcome the disadvantages of face-to-face and online learning for achieving Transformative Learning. This is coupled with the Community of Practice approach (Etienne Wenger) for sustaining and extending collective learning and providing a nurturing space for innovations.
• Specialised knowledge and related conversations can be accessed online, leaving precious face-to-face time for whole person experiential and social learning.
• The participants are engaged with online peer group when they work on their projects at home. As the pioneers of change who may face resistance in their social environment, this is very helpful, providing confirmation and support, which maintains behaviour change.
• Participating occasionally in a face-to-face module enhances an online course by increasing the identification with the group and enabling embodied experiences.

RESULTS, IMPACT & LONG-TERM BENEFITS
The project will produce a set of results which enable adult educators to deliver transformative learning affordably at scale, in highly accessible ways. It will deliver training to educators that pilots and develops a methodology for maximising the effectiveness of educators and learners to engage with, use and benefit from the platform and system that the project delivers. The impact will be that Europe’s communities will be set up to have access to high quality transformative learning that will help bringing about significant shifts to sustainable low carbon lifestyles and communities.

POTENTIAL LONGER TERM BENEFITS
The potential longer term benefits include massive shifts to low carbon living, health creating and circular resource efficient lifestyles, resilient low carbon communities, with healthy local and regional economies and ecosystems that deliver healthy food and clean energy to the communities they serve in Europe, and beyond.

Project Website

https://www.hostingtransformation.eu/blast/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 269057,95 Eur

Project Coordinator

RESEAU EUROPEEN POUR DES INITIATIVES COMMUNAUTAIRES SUR LES CHANGEMENTS CLIMATIQUES ET LE DEVELOPPEMENT DURABLE & Country: BE

Project Partners

• Asociatia Romania in Tranzitie
• HRVATSKA PERMAKULTURA
• Gaia Education
• Visionautik e.V.
• SUSTAINABLE IRELAND CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETY LTD
• PERMACULTURE ASSOCIATION (BRITAIN)LBG
• Institute for Global Integral Competence e.V.