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1. Educational support

2. Social cohesion and equal opportunities

Educational support

One of goals of Erasmus+: Youth in Action programme is to improve the most important skills and abilities of young people, including youth having less opportunities, as well as to promote involvement of young people in the democratic life in Europe and labour market, active youth citizenship, intercultural dialogue, social inclusion and solidarity, especially increasing opportunities for mobility of young people with the purpose to learn, persons who are actively involved in the work with youth or youth organisations, and youth leaders, and strengthening links between the youth field and the labour market.

Erasmus+: Youth in Action programme promotes equality and inclusion, fostering access of participants from less favourable environment who have less opportunities in comparison to their peers when the disadvantageous situation limits or denies an opportunity to participate in transnational events due to the following reasons:

• disability (i.e., participants with special needs) – people with mental (intellectual, cognitive, learning abilities), physical, sensory or other disability;

• learning difficulties – young people with learning difficulties, early school leavers, adults with low qualifications, young people with low success at school;

• economic obstacles – people with low standard of living, low income, dependency on the social welfare system or homeless people, long-term unemployed young people or young people who live in poverty, people with debts or other financial problems;

• cultural differences – immigrants or refugees, or descendants of immigrants or refugees, people belonging to national or ethnic minorities, people with difficulties to adapt to language or integrate in culture;

• health problems – people with chronic health problems, serious diseases or psychiatric conditions;

• social obstacles – people who are discriminated on the basis of gender, age, ethnic origin, religious conviction, sexual orientation, disability and other reasons, people with limited social skills or anti-social or risky behaviour, people who are in an insecure situation, (former) offenders, (former) drug or alcohol abusers, young and/or single parents, orphans;

• geographic obstacles – people from distant or rural areas, people living on small islands or in distant regions, people from problematic urban areas, people from regions with limited service infrastructure (limited public transport, insufficient services).

Youth employee mobility projects, which promote the development of competences of youth employees for work with young people from target groups of social inclusion are supported within the scope of the programme.

Social cohesion and equal opportunities

Lifelong learning is a lifelong learning process based on changing needs for the acquisition of knowledge, skills, experience to raise or change their qualifications in line with labor market requirements, their own interests and needs. Lifelong learning combines non-formal learning with formal education, develops innate abilities along with new competences.

Lifelong learning goals are:

to ensure access to lifelong learning for the population regardless of their age, gender, previous education, place of residence, income level, ethnicity, functional disorders.

to provide adults with a quality education offer that provides sustainable competence for work, civic participation, personality development and promoting the development of a competitive knowledge economy and a democratic society based on high skills in Latvia.

to create a coherent system of normative acts and efficient management of resources (including financial), taking into account the principles of shared responsibility and interaction of sectoral policies, the development of a unified lifelong learning system.

The provision of competences takes place throughout the lifecycle of informal (everyday learning) (eg, mother tongue, learning to learn), and is ensured when a person engages in initial formal education (pre-school, elementary school, high school, university) and non-formal education (additional training in programs offers various state, municipal and private education institutions, eg language courses).