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3.1 ITALY

Adult education in Italy is mainly funded through project funding, programme funding and operating
grants. Unless funded by the ministry of education, it is hard to secure extra financial capabilities
and even that is hard to accomplish due to being related mostly to public organizations.

Therefore, each vet or adult education centres operates in a way to secure extra funding and
opportunities via European activities and tools. As mentioned above, education institutions in Italy
rely a lot on this type of projects and initiatives, both at EU level directly and local level indirectly
(via EU funding secured by the Regions or Nation).

There are several lines of financial opportunities that involves the funding of educational activities
and often schools and centres participate in many of them at the same time. This fosters the
integration of new teaching methodologies and increase teachers and educators’ skills as well as
secure tools and opportunities for the institution itself.

However, in Italy, there is a lack of a common or comprehensive strategy when it comes to
education and digital education for adult education centres, and each institution decides on its own
which kind of activity to participate in and how much.

There are national documents that propose and lay down information and framework for future
development of digital education strategy, but there is a stark difference between what it is
expected and what it is carried out. It is often the case that institutions rely on personal initiative of
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their principal to participate in those activities and secure financing and integration of new
methodologies and teaching opportunities.

3.2 PORTUGAL

Portuguese adult education organisations main sources of funding for inclusion of digital learning
and digitalisation strategies are related to national funding opportunities, mostly related to

European Union funding schemes, as PT2020, Social Innovation Fund and other funds available for
updating curricula and competences related to education.

Much of the work is also supported by social engagement of citizens, especially students and
educators and their voluntary engagement in supporting transition toward digital education and
especially in building digital skills among people in risk of digital exclusion. The voluntary
engagement is a base of many local initiatives (as significant part of adult education is provided by
NGOs), but is also an integral part of the governmental program ‘Portugal Digital’ aiming at providing

digital skills to individuals, digital transformation of companies and governmental sector, and
counting on involvement of 10.000 students across 950 educational organisations for upskilling 1
million of Portuguese in the risk of digital exclusion regarding their basic digital skills.

Private resources, mostly related with donations from companies and internal efforts of
organisations to collect or earn money to subsidise their mission related with digital education and