GENERATION NEXT. Portuguese adult educator Inês Cerca fights against social injustice in a country under a severe economic crisis.
Until the end of March, Inês Cerca, 31, works as a trainer in a state-run learning centre. Her duties also include strengthening the validation system of adult education. The unsecure future does not defeat this young adult educator with a positive attitude.
"In my work I get inspired of following the learning processes. It is rewarding to see that learners´ gain self-esteem as they become qualified. I also get inspired of the learners. From aged learners I hear about old Portuguese traditions and history.
The most annoying feature of my work is the bureaucracy of non-formal adult education in my country. The amount of documents we have to sign per learner is tremendous, because we have to follow our national framework.
The mission of non-formal adult education is to develop learners. It gives tools to understand the world and criticize it. The second mission is to fight against poverty by giving people with low skills keys to save themselves from poverty trap. Read more...

By Steven Greenhouse. IT was an unusually enthusiastic shout-out for the job certificate programs offered by many community colleges. A report found that men with nondegree certificates in computer/information services earned $72,498 a year on average — more money than 72 percent of men with associate’s degrees and more than 54 percent of men with bachelor’s degrees.
That study, completed this past June by work force experts at Georgetown University, also found that women with such certificates earned more money than 75 percent of women with associate’s degrees and 64 percent of women with bachelor’s degrees. Read more...

By ROBERT STRAUSS. ADITI ROY wasn’t looking to become an entrepreneur or head to Wall Street or move up the corporate totem pole like most of her compatriots in the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School executive M.B.A. program. She was the morning news anchor for WCAU-TV, the NBC affiliate in Philadelphia, and already had a stint as West Coast correspondent for the network.
“I was definitely the outlier in that class. Those people already had amazing business minds,” Ms. Roy said. Read more...

4-5 July 2013
The international conference “Skilling the Future – VET and Workplace Learning for Economic Success” co-organised by OECD and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) will take place in Leipzig, Germany, during the WorldSkills Leipzig 2013 event.
The Skills beyond School review of Switzerland was published on 7 January 2013 and is available on the country studies page. The first two country reviews in the Skills beyond School thematic review of postsecondary vocational education and training were published on 4 September 2012.  Please see the country studies rubric to download the review of Denmark and the review of Korea. The commentaries on Spain and Israel have also been published and are free to download on the country studies page. Read more...

EAEA has started a new project called ARALE for "Awareness Raising for Adult Learning and Education."
ARALE aims to add the visibility of adult education in Europe.
More information: Dedicated ARALE website.

By Conal Urquhart. The universities minister encouraged workers at the end of their careers to study again as educational patterns change. Older people should consider going to university in order to continue working beyond the official retirement age, the minister for higher education has said.
David Willetts encouraged workers at the end of their careers to see higher education as an option. "There is certainly a pressure for continuing to get retrained and upskilled. Higher education has an economic benefit in that if you stay up to date with knowledge and skills, you are more employable," he told reporters as he travelled with the prime minister, David Cameron, in India. Read more...

By Tania Berman. New EAEA project ARALE tracks the keys to successful adult education campaigns
EAEA's new project Awareness Raising for Adult Learning and Education (ARALE) aims to collect best practices of awareness raising and advocacy campaigns for adult education in Europe. The project got its kick-off meeting on the 4th of February 2013 in Copenhagen, Denmark. ARALE is a one-year project funded by the European Commission´s Grundtvig programme. Its objective is to analyse the criteria for success for adult education campaigns targeting policy-makers, general public or specific target groups. These campaigns will serve as a basis to determine key conditions and tools to create successful adult education campaigns.
The kick-off meeting took place in the cosy and beautiful office of the Danish Adult Education Association (DAEA), one of the three partners of the project. Other partners include EAEA and the Estonian Non-Formal Adult Education Association (ENAEA).

Spreading information about adult education from the countries of Europe and EU institutions is the aim and objective of the unique English service "European InfoNet Adult Education", which has been developed as part of an EU project and now restarts the service after a one year break. EAEA is partner of InfoNet.
The first Infonet Newsletter has been released last week. It is the new format of the former InfoLetter which was published by InfoNet Adult Education. After a break of one year InfoNet Adult Education in late 2012 resumed activity, when it was approved by the European Commission for a new three year period as a multilateral Grundtvig Project. The first Infonet Newsletter focuses on the effects of the economic crisis around Europe. Also European adult education policies are covered, and the reader gets latest news on Erasmus for All.
In the next period InfoNet intend to seriously upgrade its coverage of science and research in adult education. In the first issue Dr. Maurice de Greef explains the results of a Dutch research project on the effects of digital learning on different target groups, including participants with learning disabilities. As a new feature of InfoNet we will occasionally publish articles on adult education policies and practices outside Europe. Recently Gisela Waschek uploaded an article on training funds in Uganda, and Katarina Popovic interviewed a young Afghan woman who did not lack learning motivation. The InfoNet Newsletter is not available as PDF but to make sure you get the next issue, you can subscribe it on InfoNet website.

By Laila Azzeh. As a communication skills trainer, Samira Siouf felt that she “lacked something” despite her many years of service. Working at the Queen Zein Al Sharaf Institute for Development for eight years, Siouf said that she was “good” at what she was doing, but could not attribute the communication methods she was teaching to their corresponding social sciences.
“It was teaching by experience, rather than by knowledge,” she told The Jordan Times on Wednesday.
After getting the chance to attend a three-month intensive course held by the Institute of International Cooperation of the German Adult Education Association (dvv international), Siouf said she felt more “confident” and better equipped to “fulfil the requirements of her job”.
Siouf was among 25 beneficiaries who received training under the Adult Education for Development programme, which was highlighted at a conference titled “Closing Gaps, Opening Opportunities: Adult Education and Lifelong Learning in the Middle East”, which opened on Wednesday.
Addressing the conference, HRH Princess Basma underlined the importance of the adult learning approach in building societies, ensuring the participation of everyone in the development process and eliminating poverty and unemployment.
“Lifelong learning was one of the strategies that we adopted in the work of the Jordanian Hashemite Fund for Human Development [JOHUD], but we used different names to describe what we were doing,” the princess said, noting that developing the capabilities of human resources was one of the terms used to refer to the fund’s activities. Read more...