A new edition of the course on Planning a Family and Intergenerational Literacy and Learning (FILL) Programme starts on April 12, 2021. The course, offered by COL and the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL), will run for a period of four weeks.

This collaboration builds on COL’s expertise in open and distance and lifelong learning, and UIL’s long history of developing and promoting family and intergenerational literacy learning approaches.

The course has been developed to support individuals and institutions in advancing learning within families and also to mitigate the education crisis caused by COVID-19. The first edition of the FILL course attracted participants from over 20 countries.

One participant, an Adult Education practitioner from the Caribbean, said of the first offer of the course, “Before taking this course, the concept of FILL was parents ‘passing down’ knowledge to their children. Now, I understand FILL to be an enduring process of improving the literacy, numeracy, schooling and other lifelong areas for disadvantaged families in communities across countries.”

The FILL course is designed for education professionals, staff from civil society organisations and government institutions, non-governmental providers of literacy and early childhood education, as well as teacher educators. The participation of women professionals is highly encouraged.

COL’s Education Specialist: Teacher Education, Dr Betty Ogange said, “Parental and family literacy is not only critical to improved delivery of distance, technology-enabled and various forms of home-based learning, but also necessary for better parent – teacher engagement during regular schooling.”

Professionals interested in the course are invited to send an email to teachered{at}colfinder{dot}org.