Adaptability Thematic Network

You can download documents from the following Adaptability Thematic Network meeting:
- January 2004
- September 2003
- October 2002

The first Adaptability Thematic Network meeting was held on Autumn 2002 in Dublin and representatives from each of the 5 Adaptability DPs and the two Equal Opportunities DPs attended what was a successful kick-off event.

A second meeting was held in Galway in January 2003 and a planned third meeting Dublin (July 2003) was deferred until early September 2003 due to unavailability of key personnel.

The first two thematic meetings involved some degree of familiarisation between and amongst DPs and this has proved to be useful in allowing for informal alliances and exchanges to develop between projects. The Galway meeting was also attendee by members of the Steering Group of the Adaptability European Thematic Group in which Ireland plays a lead role together with France, the Commission and consultants, GHK. In addition, Dr. Alan Bruce presented a paper on the issues of Diversity that was well received – it is our intention to build a formal educational / conceptual aspect into each thematic meeting with a view to encouraging debate and opening up areas of discussion relevant in an Equal context.

It is apparent that there is significant scope for the development of synergies and complementarities amongst the seven projects represented in the Adaptability network. The scope for shared learning is great (for example in the development of equality training) as is the scope for shared strategies (for example in information dissemination, events, publications etc.).

The key issues for the group involve the following key questions that have repeated themselves in large part at European level:

• How can equality and diversity be ‘sold’ to employers?
• What is the trade union stake in equality/diversity and how can trades unions be involved as agents of change and promoters of equality and diversity?
• How can we build in / harness the ‘voice(s)’ of the target groups to inform the planning, design, delivery and feedback processes?
• How do we recognise and validate good practice?
• What is the process and who should be involved in the validation of good practice?
• When should key influencers / stakeholders be involved in the process?

Going forward we plan to explore the possibilities for collaboration in a range of areas including equality/diversity training, job rotation and migrant workers. Furthermore we aim to explore the possibility of developing mainstreaming plans at inter-project and/or thematic levels that may be presented to the Mainstreaming Policy Group referenced above.

- Adaptability European Thematic Group.