Equal - Digital Repository

Background

Valuing Learning - Strengthening Communities (VLSC) is a Cardiff-based Development Partnership focused on developing learning activities and opportunities for paid and voluntary work within the voluntary and community sectors. 

Aims

• Encourage and support adults and young people to re-engage with learning
• Support community and voluntary organisations in helping learners move from informal learning to more formal learning pathways and into employment, voluntary work or other worthwhile civic involvement
• Enable informal learning to be recognised and valued and to serve as a building block to more formal qualifications.

Objectives

• Help the voluntary and community sectors support the learning needs of those who traditionally have had limited access to learning opportunities
• Provide opportunities for people to develop the generic skills required by local and national employers
• Provide a route to qualifications which could lead to voluntary or paid employment in the voluntary and community sectors
• Develop and test quality assurance models and establish criteria needed to enable learning for purposes other than accreditation
• Test potential means of recording learning gained for purposes other than accreditation in a way that is compatible with the Lifelong Learning Wales Record and the Credit and Curriculum Framework for Wales.  

Activities

• Training staff and volunteers of voluntary and community organisations to help them support learners and potential learners
• Developing the capacity of organisations to progress learners from involvement in learning for purpose other than accreditation into accredited learning pathways
• Offering learner-centred opportunities to groups and individuals
• Developing a template for identifying and evidencing learning gained, based on best practice and for testing within the different learning contexts represented in the partnership
• Developing ways of recognising and accrediting informal learning, and potential links to the Lifelong Learning Wales Record and the Credit and Qualification Framework for Wales. 

Target Groups 

• Men and women in black and minority ethnic communities
• People over the age of 50
• Disaffected young people
• Women with mental health difficulties
• Men and women on low incomes

The voluntary and community sector in Cardiff wanted to build a network to support paid and unpaid opportunities in the voluntary and community sectors. NIACE were approached to undertake the lead role in a project to support pathways into employment at pre-vocational levels. Unfortunatley NIACE could not continue as lead partner into Action 3.

The DP expects there to be recognition and accreditation of informal learning with formal links with the Curriculum Qualifications Framework, and that this recognition will inform other UK and EU accreditation and credit frameworks.