The basic principle of the project “Enhancement in psychosocial life skills” was to describe our contemporary living situation. Among other things, the project found that the increase in decision options for human beings, along with their greater disorientation, pressure to self-improve and the increasingly rapid pace of living conditions go hand-in-hand with a growing alienation from the (social, natural, psychiatric and spiritual) world. Life transitions are increasing and interpersonal relationships are becoming more fragile. Human beings are facing the challenge of steering themselves, designing how they live with one another constructively and in a way that fosters solidarity.Consequently, mental stress is increasing and diagnoses of illnesses of a psychological nature are on the rise. Many people are seeking refuge in addictions or fundamentalism in an attempt to escape this pressure and to regain control over their lives. The Corona pandemic, which started during the course of the project, has placed the stress faced by human beings and their abilities to overcome this as well as their limitations in even greater focus.An ideal image of a psychosocial, strong personality was developed that had its foundations in this analysis. Attitudes and abilities were assigned to the basic cornerstones of thinking and feeling, wanting and acting. An assumption was made here that they strengthen the resilience of human beings and their mental health. This is not only important for individuals but also politically and socially relevant, in light of the financial effects of the increase in mental illnesses.Psychosocial life skills enhancement is a preventative approach for strengthening living proficiency. It promotes the self-regulating ability of human beings in social contexts, supports their self-responsibility and offers possibilities for acquiring a personal orientation system. It strives at support of the (psychological) health of people as well as the extension of equal (health) opportunities and the strengthening of social participation. Psychosocial life skills enhancement is based on the trinity of education, consultation and supervision. It opens up “learning and feedback spaces”, “zones of encounter” and “workshops of success and failure”. It works in a resource-oriented manner, involves the target groups and takes into account forms of self-controlled informal learning. Much attention is paid to the question of knowledge transfer.Alongside this theoretical basis, new formats were firstly devised, conducted and evaluated. Secondly strategies and tools were developed that ensure the quality of offers of psychosocial life skills enhancement and safeguard this. In this way a quality framework and a description of successful learning arose. Furthermore tools were developed for describing the target group, evaluation etc.During a concluding conference, the results and experience of the Erasmus+ project were presented to and discussed with the wider public. Within this framework, there was evidence of great interest and much positive feedback was received about the project results. In addition, a wide range of suggestions were made about developing the project further and consolidating enhancement based on feedback.

"Based on the realization that there are very few inclusive offers in the European context of adult education, or that the few available offers are not sufficiently communicated and therefore can’t reach the target group, we have set ourselves the goal of changing this.The project consortium was made up of educational institutions acting as providers of continuing education services in the field of adult education and having a great interest in opening up their offerings to the target group, and of the Jugendaufbauwerk Plön-Koppelsberg, Lebenshilfewerk and Wien Work, which acted as support for measures for people with disabilities.It was about the connection of disabled and non-disabled life worlds as well as the integration into contemporary and sustainable inclusive offers of adult education.This has enabled us to build a European network for inclusive and participatory adult education and, in addition, to identify other European partners who, as a result, will be able to develop and test further inclusive and participatory services in European Adult Education.Due to internal, structural changes in the project partner Bildungshaus Kloster Neustift (Italy - South Tyrol), about half of the project duration, there were changes in the strategic partnership required. The Bildungshaus Kloster Neustift left the contract. In coordination with the National Agency it was possible to win over and integrate a new project partner from Romania with the Begegnungs- und Kulturzentrum Friedrich Teutsch.Overall, and over the entire project period were involved more than 40 players in the exchange of experiences in good practice through including adult education and the development of innovative products of inclusive, participatory adult education. These were pedagogical experts as well as disabled and non-disabled adult education teachers as experts in their own right.In addition, external experts have been involved in the project work repeatedly in order to make the connection of disabled and non-disabled environments at the conceptual level inclusive, participatory and barrier-free.In the frame of meetings and conferences with the respective partners, which were organized in the form of workshops and working groups, it was possible to work out the possible thematic approaches for inclusive training modules, in which the respective regional and cultural particularities as well as the structure of the respective providers / educational institutions could be identified and considered. The detailed requirements, in terms of content, didactics, as well as the infrastructure and the organizational framework conditions were defined here.As one result, it has succeeded in conceptually designing, offering and implementing an inclusive education program. As a specification, a curriculum was developed in which the schedule for a week including training program is described in an exemplary manner.Entitled “Look across the Box"", the adult education course on ""Health and Nutrition"" was held at the Bildungshaus Schloss Retzhof in Nals in Styria. Care was taken to ensure that not only the group of participants consisted of both disabled and non-disabled men and women. The speakers and presenters led the seminar series by as disabled / not disabled tandem on the team.The evaluation and impact measurement has produced very positive results. Participants have found the inclusive participatory approach to be extremely beneficial. Inhibition thresholds were reduced not only among the participants, but also among the speakers and presenters.Based on the curriculum, the educational institutions will further reinforce their integrative approach, taking this into account in their infrastructural planning and in the content of their didactic development of the offer."

Today, communities are under enormous pressure to fulfil their duties and to enliven democracy through active civic involvement. In many municipalities, citizens are perceived as very demanding. There is, however, a lack of appropriate instruments, help and training to actively involve these citizens in community life. Quality of life is usually described by infrastructure measures, but it is personal experience that allows people to really feel it. “Quality of life through proximity” starts exactly at this point, where people can feel the quality of life through cooperation, participation, civic commitment, helping people to help themselves and close cooperation of as many people as possible in the communities.The objectives of the project were to provide community leaders with instruments and support for involving citizens. Through training (information) and awareness-raising, the prerequisites were to be created for citizens to organize themselves in the communities. Thus, citizens should be enabled to improve their quality of life in a self-responsible and tangible way through projects, models and activities. In addition, process facilitators for communities should be trained and curricula should be developed for training community facilitators and players in the communities. A total of six partner organisations worked together in the project, all of which are active in adult education and have access to community work. The lead partner SPES Zukunftsakademie Austria has a focus on community and family work in addition to general adult education. SPES e.V. Germany contributes experience in the field of community support. The partner K-Punkt from Germany concentrates on organizing conferences on topics of communal coexistence. The adult education centres Schloss Goldrain and Kloster Neustift from South Tyrol want to put clear emphasis on civic education, in addition to their current work in adult education. The European umbrella organisation EAEA contributes above all their experience in the area of networking and dissemination of project results.In order to be able to implement the LQN program in communities, twelve PBs were initially trained on this program, and a training curriculum was developed and implemented for this purpose. In model communities, core teams (citizens and leaders) were trained to pick up and implement issues of ownership, self-organization of civic engagement, and culture of relationship in their community. A separate curriculum was also developed for this purpose. Best-practice models were researched throughout Europe and prepared for community reconstruction. Ideas and visions for the implementation of LQN in the own community were developed. The resulting working groups were trained within the framework of the Erasmus + project and accompanied during implementation.Parallel to this development approach, a competence check was prepared for committed citizens: using an online tool, citizens should be able to define their competences acquired through extracurricular measures. In this way, the volunteers should be aware of the value of this experience and be made transportable for their professional life.An awareness-raising package for LQN was artistically created to accompany the training activities and made available to the communities.A total of twelve PBPs were trained in the project and are now able to implement LQN processes in the three participating countries. In addition, 80 persons responsible for the community were trained and 34 projects implemented, which are available as competence providers in their communities over the long term. A total of 1,600 people were reached through the LQN events, the AK's and project activities.A total of 9 development processes were accompanied in 7 municipalities, in which 34 projects were realized.Impact: In addition to the project period, trained PBs are available for other municipalities. Through their education, they have comprehensive know-how on citizen participation and the activation of citizenship potential. In the communities themselves, there are numerous volunteers who continue to work in AK's after completing the subsidized LQN process phase. Many started projects have a long-term impact and continue to develop their ideas.Especially the participation of citizens creates motivation to get involved in the democratic parish structures. This culture of participation reveals the value of democracy and counteracts the political disenchantment of citizens. The recognition of self-efficacy and concrete opportunities to get involved creates a good foundation for volunteering in your own area.