AGAINST THE FAKE NEWS AND TOWARDS THE BASIC EDUCATION DEGREE

Adults with low education currently face multiple barriers to achieving official basic education qualifications, including low motivation, low self-esteem, and economic and socialization barriers. If these people also happen to belong to migrant groups, are segregated by gender, or are alone, the barriers become even more aggravated, even insurmountable. It is precisely these same barriers that hate speech uses to permeate these adults through Fake News that blame their ills on other groups through falsified studies and data. The COVID-19 pandemic only aggravated this situation, and according to Spain’s National Police there are 1.5 million social media accounts with the sole purpose of spreading Fake News. This project was born in 2021 as a result of: - The EDUCATIONAL NEEDS that we detect in these adults with obstacles when fighting against their barriers in previous projects. - The SOCIAL NEED across Europe to put an end to Fake News that hate speech uses to undermine the EU’s values and that take advantage of this group of adults due to their lack of digital skills or critical analysis to question the fallacious arguments they use.

With the project "AGAINST THE FAKE NEWS AND TOWARDS THE BASIC EDUCATION DEGREE FOR ADULTS" we have worked actively to alleviate the aforementioned needs, which on the one hand cause educational barriers and on the other facilitate the proliferation of these Fake News. By providing solutions to these social needs and to the inclusion of adults with obstacles (economic barriers are the responsibility of the public administration), we have increased their motivation, confidence, critical thinking skills, digital skills, and effectively alleviated their isolation. Thanks to the matrix of the Logical Framework of this project, we related these NEEDS to its OBJECTIVES, RESULTS, and ACTIVITIES, thus acting on the following objectives: Obj1) FOR ADULTS TO REGAIN THEIR SELFTRUST BY FACILITATING THEIR SOCIALIZATION. Obj2) DEVELOP BASIC AND EDUCATIONAL SKILLS THAT PROMOTE INCLUSION. Obj3) ENHANCE AND EXPAND THE OFFER OF HIGH-QUALITY LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES. Obj4) CREATE INNOVATIVE EDUCATIONAL TOOLS AND MATERIALS THAT ENGAGE THE USER AGAINST FAKE NEWS. Obj5) THE CREATION OF THE EUROPEAN NETWORK TO PROMOTE THE INTERNATIONALIZATION AND COOPERATION OF ENTITIES.

To achieve these objectives, we created the intersectoral association of the 6 entities that launched this project, including in it cooperatives, social associations, foundations, and schools from France, Spain, Greece, Austria, and Portugal. Our varied partnership has carried out a range of activities over 26 months, achieving high-quality results that have had an impact on the beneficiary group, on the adult education sector, and on the entities themselves. We have implemented more than 35 types of activities within the project, which involved more than 200 specific actions during the 4 phases of the project (planning, preparation, execution, and follow-up); from preparation activities, to 4 Transnational Meetings, activities for the selection of participants, activities for the creation of results and training, networking activities, pilot testing of the results, and dissemination activities, including three large Multiplier Events. It should be noted that all this was done following the fundamental principles of sustainability and accessibility through digitalization, participation in equity, and gender equality.

With the activities discussed in the previous section, we have developed several tangible and structural results, as well as a high-impact main result, the O1 “AGAINST THE FAKE NEWS AND TOWARDS THE BASIC EDUCATION DEGREE FOR ADULTS”, a course for massive e-Learning platforms aimed at revolutionizing adult education while fighting against Fake News. This result allows adults to act directly against Fake News while acquiring the necessary skills to get a basic qualification (by being adapted to the educational objectives of the curricula of the participating countries). This result is complemented by an itinerary on social networks and the internet defined in the “R1 - PLAN OF ONLINE ACTIVITIES: EUROPE AGAINST FAKE NEWS”, which combines passive training with active action, with which users are accredited as watchdogs against Fake News with the “WATCHERS” insignia (R2). We have also created the “WEB PLATFORM AGAINST FAKE NEWS” and the “SOCIAL MEDIA AWARENESS CAMPAIGN” (R4), along with multiple structural results developed in the partner entities, making them more effective, enhancing their impact, and generating synergies with other areas.