Empowerment in the Lifelong Learning Perspective. Example from the “ICT Guides” Project

Abstract

The paper describes one of the important categories of the lifelong learning discourse – empowerment, and presents the “ICT Guides” project as an example of a good practice in introducing empowerment. In particular, our findings suggest that it is crucial to start taking preventative measures against social exclusion of marginalized groups using ICT tools, and that the main barriers to ICT adaptation are not ICT skills but anxiety and deficiency of motivation and interest. This draws our attention to the category of empowerment, which, as we have shown above, enables full participation of those individuals that, because of various social or biographical processes, have been marginalized or excluded. The overview of research work documents shows such significant issues of lifelong education as (1) encouragement to gain new knowledge, (2) the fight against marginalization, (3) learning foreign languages, and (4) the fight against poverty. It also needs to be noted that lifelong learning is the most crucial foundation for the development of society, being a remedy for the social activity Empowerment has been considered in the paper in relation to ICT skills and in the context of marginalized individuals, such as the elderly being often excluded from ICT-based social environments. Experiences from the “ICT Guides” project prove the need for promoting adults’ empowerment through ICT-based activities, which visibly influences the improvement of social relations, information gathering, and learning activities. Adults’ learning processes might be enriched through collaboration partnerships with youth, where youth and adults share planning and decisionmaking responsibilities to achieve goals and share experience and expertise on planning and evaluation. This project has shown that cooperation between young people and adults contributes to building the sense of agency and lowering the sense of social exclusion due to lack of skills, thus empowering both groups.