JANE Manning and Ben Ward from Dursley-based community organisation World Jungle have successfully completed the final phase of a two-year long European Learning project as one of just two organisations representing Great Britain.

Their final visit at the end of last month to Aliaga, Turkey, marked the end of the European funded project which aimed to promote learning to disadvantaged groups across the UK and Europe.

The Grundtivig Learning Partnership project called ‘Beyond the Book’ brought together learning professionals, artists, and video technicians from 9 different European countries to share their skills and explore the ways in which video production can help to support the learning of disadvantaged groups including school leavers, youth at risk, elderly and the long term unemployed. Through learning the skills of video production, the group explored how other key learning skills are embedded in the process and how this can be a fantastic way to engage learners who struggle with a straight classroom-based approach.

Over the past two years the group have come together in Tubingen in Germany, Vienna, Milan, Budapest and Aliaga, western Turkey. It is not the first European project World Jungle has been involved with and the organisation is keen to develop its multi-national partnerships further , whilst also sharing its experiences and knowledge with organisations at home too.

Ben Ward, Director said: “We are very proud to have been part of this project. In Aliaga we presented our short film and learning outcomes to over one hundred Turkish representatives from different education establishments, explaining how this innovative approach could be taken forward and applied at ground level.

Creating videos can support non-traditional learners to develop a range of key skills including literacy, numeracy, problem solving, team work and IT to name a few. It provides the learner with an innovative and exciting learning experience based around ‘real-world’ needs.”

Now back in Dursley, the couple are keen share what they have learned from the project with UK learning organisations, offering advice and training to learning providers around how this innovative ‘problem-based learning’ approach could support disadvantaged groups.

For more information, please contact Ben Ward from World Jungle on 07889 512644 or email: ben@worldjungle.org.uk Website: www.worldjungle.org.uk .