MENON NETWORK EEIG

The MENON Network EEIG is a European innovation and research network providing information and advice to policy makers, education communities, and the ICT industry on issues related to Innovation and changes in Education and Training (E&T), Lifelong, Life-wide and Intergenerational Learning and the Knowledge Society developments in Europe and worldwide.

Among the areas of expertise, there are management of transnational projects on e-Learning, Research and Development (R&D) in the field of emerging technologies for education, research into value-oriented and innovative use of ICT, and development of useful ICT applications and services of better quality. MENON plays a key role in important European organisations, like the European Foundation for Quality in eLearning (EFQUEL) and the European Distance and eLearning Network (EDEN).

The current members of MENON: The Lambrakis Research Foundation, Greece; SCIENTER, Italy; The Tavistock Institute, United Kingdom; CEPCEP - Research Centre of People and Cultures in Portugal, Catholic University of Portugal (UCP), Portugal; The Centre for Learning Innovation and Adult Learning, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary.

The mission of MENON is to facilitate the evolution of the Knowledge Society in Europe and in other parts of the world, making learning a priority issue in policy agendas around economic, social and cultural development at both national and international level.

MENON represents a unique integration of multidisciplinary expertise and “innovative thinking”. It can draw on a comprehensive and diverse knowledge base combining evaluation of large scale programmes as well as best practice analyses; observatory actions; research methods and their application; network development and implementation; policy analysis; dissemination and valorising innovative practices.
The network is active both at national level, through its members, and at transnational level, where the EEIG co-ordinates projects and other collaboration and support work to the European Commission and to international organisations.

MENON has participated in various projects funded by the European Commission, amongst them initiatives, networks and projects of the Lifelong Learning (LLP) and Framework 7 Programmes.

Role in the Project

MENON is responsible for the manifold aspects of intergenerational learning as well as for the development of the related training strategy for the BIG FOOT pilot sites and in particular for the ‘Intergenerational Community Service Learning Approach’.

MENON aims at providing BIG FOOT with a detailed understanding of intergenerational, later life, lifelong and life wide learning processes of the young and the elderly generation, which will work together during the BIG FOOT on site applications.

MENON and its membership organisations can draw upon extensive expertise stemming from previous R&D projects, such as EAGLE (www.eagle-project.eu), IANUS (ianusllp.org), EMIL (www.emil-network.eu) or LEARNOVATION (learnovation.wordpress.com) amongst other activities and initiatives conducted over the last years. By these means MENON tries to give a substantial contribution to encourage new, innovative and alternative learning pathways of (not only adult) education by encouraging the collaboration of different local, regional, national, European and international organizations and by connecting more informal, mostly bottom up structures.

MENON will organize a project-internal workshop in Brussels for the training of partners’ staff to apply the ‘Intergenerational Community Service Learning Approach’ on the ground in ‘real life’ practice experiments.