Including policy in your project agenda
Why is policy relevant to language projects?
Successful promotion of the results of a language project is not just dependent on raising awareness amongst direct targets such as teachers or other experts in the language field. Targeting policy makers may help to increase visibility of the project and maximise its impact.
Policy makers can provide new opportunities for future funding, networking, ideas for expansion of activities and sustainability of the results. They can thus become your project multipliers.
Language promotion can be an important element of several policy agendas at the local or national levels. Languages can be linked to important policy issues such as intercultural dialogue, socio-economic development, employment and integration. Moreover, at the European level, languages have recently gained greater strategic importance through key policy decisions like the Lisbon strategy and specific EU actions on multilingualism. International organisations such as UNESCO and the Council of Europe as well as the European Union consider multilingualism to be an increasingly important factor for European integration and a more effective internal market. National and regional governments in several European countries consider language competence to be an important factor for employment and intercultural understanding.
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Helsinki 2006 Awards winner for best practice |
linked language promotion with peacekeeping and intercultural dialogue. The project produced language materials for staff working in the military sector. As a result of a targeted promotion strategy, Linguapeace products were used by the Bulgarian Armed Forces and the German Ministry of Defence supported the continuation of the project. The project partnership organised two big international conferences: Linguapeace: Languages for Peace and From Combat to Compassion with participants from 23 European countries, including high-ranking military officials and policy-makers.
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