Adult education - breaking the cycle of unemployment and social isolation of elders

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Continued rise of unemployment, distinctive for many European societies today, is in Serbia additionally burdened by specific long-term crisis, heightened by the world economic crisis at the end of the last decade. The gap between strategic orientation towards lifelong education as a powerful mechanism of reduction of unemployment and practice is particularly evident when it comes to a group of older unemployed. Faced with these trends, experts gathered around the Society of Andragogues of Serbia launched in 2012 the project ,,Education for employment and active aging'', within the measures of active employment, with the aim to contribute to improvement of education in Serbia and to increase the employment and the employability of adults iolder than 50 years of age. In this paper we present one segment of the results of the research conducted on a sample of 387 older unemployed in five cities in Serbia, aged 50-65, of different sex and educational status. Highlighted are findings about attitudes of unemployed towards educational opportunities which should lead them to employment and overcoming of unfavorable socio-economic status, mainly caused by long-term unemployment and gradual exclusion of social life. The observed trends are reviewed in the context of specific and global social circumstances and directions of necessary improvement of educational and other solutions at the level of policy and practice of (adult) education and employment.