Our project, context and motivation.

 All the nine institutions from seven EU member states (Germany, Austria, Hungary, Spain, UK, Poland and the Czech Republic) have been working in the field of family education for many years. A substantial part of the activities rest on voluntary involvement. As juridical independent members of the international Schoenstatt Movement, their methodological concepts and programmes stem from the tradition of the reforming educator, Joseph Kentenich (1885-1968), who devoted himself especially as the founder of a Christian family movement to stabilizing marriage and family life.

 The starting-point for the idea of the project is the sociological and economic consequences of the break-up of families, or family-like structures, and above all their negative consequences for women and children in particular, and social cohesion as a whole.

 So, for example, the group of single parents represents a risk group for chronic poverty in all the EU states.                                     (Cf.http://ec.europa.eu/employment_social/social_inclusion/docs/child_poverty_leaflet_de.pdf).

 Until now programmes have started with the question as to how one can support single parents and their children. The present learning partnership (LP) programme is preventative in nature and is dedicated to answering the following key questions:

How can one prevent single parenthood happening?

How can one stabilize marriages and partnerships?

 In Germany, Austria and Hungary long years of experience with seminars and events show that it is possible to have a stabilizing effect on marriages and families. These results have so far not been evaluated in any European country.

 The suggested LP is devoted to an exchange on proven practices in preventative family work and education. A central question is to be how the proven results of communication psychology can be integrated into existing methods, so that a new culture of dialogue can be brought about in marriages, partnerships and families ? independent of the level of education of (marriage) partners. The traditional and nationally distinctive role models and expectations in marriage, partnership and families makes learning processes more difficult, but can lead through co-operation in Europe to a better understanding or communication of these models.

 The preparation of instruments should make it possible for institutions to compare their own work in an international context, highlight their strengths, and show possibilities for optimizing them in their own milieu.

 Interest in the various seminar models in the individual countries has grown through initial contacts. Through the participation of all partners for the first time in the EU Programme LLP-Grundtvig, the informal trans-national co-operation that has existed until now should be more strongly integrated in future in the strategies and offers of the individual organizations. 

 The LP concerned promotes the specific goal of extending the possibilities for adults to improve their knowledge and competence. In practical terms this involves:

a) Improving the abilities of (marriage) partners to communicate and resolve conflicts;

b) Optimizing the educational competence of parents;

c) Stabilizing and improving the quality of life of family, or family-like, relationships;

d) Optimizing the (marriage) partners? self-regulation of a work-life balance in keeping with the age of their children.

 On an operative level the trans-national context should promote the development and the transfer of concepts for preventative family education and improve the quality of co-operation between institutions, especially small organizations with distinctive volunteer structures.

This occurs with the help of stocktaking in the partner institutions, which will then be presented in the framework of 4 trans-national meetings and synthesized to form a common starting-point. The content of the work of the LP foresees the following main subjects:

 1. Qualitative and quantitative registration of the offers made by the partner organizations involved;

2. Working out benchmarks for accepting successful models from individual countries by the other countries;

3. Standardizing the training modules for multipliers in the individual countries;

4. Optimizing the PR work of the individual countries in order to reach those sections of society that have distanced themselves from training.

 Division of tasks within the partnership.

In all participating institutions we have persons who are actively involved in the above-mentioned activities, either on a full time basis or as volunteers.

The request came from exactly these people to have a more intensive international exchange to improve the quality of the material available.