Home    About Us    Current Projects    What's On    Publications    Members Page    Links    Join Us    Contact Us

PACT - Learning new ways of collaborative working in Europe…

Learning Link Scotland is the co-ordinating organisation for PACT - a trans-European project that is currently exploring methods and ideas for opening up democracy and giving people a better say in how their lives and communities are organised. Besides Scotland, the project partners have been drawn from four other European countries; Spain, Norway, Portugal, and Belgium.  Through the project we hope to share the best of what is happening across Europe.

The first part of the project involved the partner organisations researching information on different practical methods of community engagement and participation.  These have now been collated into a resource pack publication – PACT with Potential (large file!), detailing concepts, activities and further information about each of the methods.  This is now available to members and practitioners here in Scotland and we hope it will prove very useful. To order a copy for £5 please email info@learninglinkscotland.org.uk.

PACT (Participatory Active Citizenship Tools for engagement in the educative and political process – to give it its grand title) aims to run four international seminars to explore and share these tools or methods.   There have been two seminars to date.  The opening one took place in Lisbon at the end of last year and allowed us to consider briefly all of the methods that the partners had brought to the table and through short workshop sessions begin to try them out.

Our second international seminar was held in Oslo this year.  This event gave us an opportunity to explore two of the methods in much greater detail. We brought ideas to explore from the technique known as Participatory Appraisal.  Whereas our Norwegian partners explored a learning-focused technique called Problem Based Learning.  The richness of this project is that many of these methods and ideas are transferable from the learning place to the wider community, as all of them are about the exploration of collaborative working.  The third seminar in the series will take place in December, again in Lisbon and will explore another two of the methods.

Our Scottish delegation to the seminars has included two member organisations from Dumfries and Galloway.  At our final international event planned to take place in Edinburgh in March 2007 we hope to be able to open it up to more members and practitioners as we conclude this stage of the work.

The project is a Learning Partnership, funded through the European Union’s adult education programme; Socrates-Grundtvig.  Learning Link Scotland have been keen to promote Grundtvig programmes in Scotland since it emerged that the take-up by the voluntary sector was particularly low in comparison to the rest of the UK.  By leading a project ourselves we hope to encourage other organisations to get involved in a funding programme, which we see as tailor-made for those working with communities and learners. For more details of Grundtvig programmes, visit http://www2.britishcouncil.org/socrates-grundtvig.htm

 

Promote                      Represent                       Develop                       Support

 
 
Learning Link Scotland, Registered Charity No. SCO 25308