The ageing of the EU population and workforce represents a great challenge to societies and economies, requiring relevant changes in labour markets. SASSI intends to focus on empowerment of the ageing workforce, developing innovative training strategies that can be applied both in continuous professional development (CPD) for 50+ employees and in VET programmes for adult job seekers. The idea is to develop an age-sensitive approach that better reflects the learning patterns of ageing workers/job seekers and make a strong impact in: • Helping mature employees to be more involved in CPD courses and maximize their possibilities of keeping their job • Empowering 50+ job seekers to promote their employability Often projects addressing this topic are focused only on one specific target group such as 50+ unemployed or mature employees less or no longer involved in training programmes. But these target groups often experience similar obstacles in joining training programmes, for instance they can find themselves denied access to training simply because they have crossed a particular age threshold. There are also similar personal barriers in the two groups, when these people internalize ageist myths believing, for instance, that retraining in unnecessary or that they are too old to retrain. The central assumption in the project is that these two target groups express the same needs in terms of age-sensitive VET and CPD programmes. The project will start with a need analysis, to get a clear picture of the actual needs of the main SASSI stakeholders – senior learners, adult VET and CPD providers, HR managers, employers, and to explore the state of the art on age-responsive education. In parallel, a community of interest (SASSI community) will be established, to generate a strong network of stakeholders, and create favorable conditions for a long life of SASSI concepts and products. The community members will make use of a multilingual e-platform on age-responsive education (SASSI HUB). SASSI stakeholders/target groups, will “meet” there and benefit from many different online features. The core of the project is the SASSI methodology and the validation system. In this context of activities, the first step will be the development of the SASSI concept, the theoretical backbone of the project. This means a precise identification of all the aspects that make a VET and CPD learning offer an age-sensitive one. The concept will present effective learning solutions that take into account different learning styles, needs and concerns of senior learners and particular psychological elements of the target group to take into consideration, like level of motivation, confidence, expectations, etc. Then a validation system will be designed, to recognize and certificate the new competences developed by the education providers and to identify the institutional/organisational changes in the enterprises’ CPD system. To this end, the partners will work on the adaptation of LEVEL5, a well proven methodology that has been set up to validate social and personal competences acquired in informal and non-formal learning. Once the first draft products (methodology, training modules and validation system) have been developed, they will be tested during a well structured piloting phase. The piloting will be preceded by a European five-day training course (C1) for VET and CPD providers, to get to know the SASSI methodology and to learn how to apply it in real training contests. At least 2-3 educational professionals will be trained per partner along the SASSI concept. During the course, the participants will be invited to scope out and start to design an educational project to be implemented in their professional practice. The idea is to let them develop training modules addressing the SASSI target group (senior job seekers and/or senior employees) applying the methodology acquired. After the course, the SASSI methodology will be piloted by the participants in real VET courses. A total number of 6 piloting entities with a minimum of 15 VET providers is envisaged. At the end of this process, the methodology will be finalised and all the main outcomes will be rolled into a unique “SASSI toolbox” which will contains all the information and guiding material to use the project main products (in particular the methodology and the validation system) in a correct way. In order to guarantee the correct use of the SASSI methodology, a certification system for VET providers will be designed. The idea is to build up a sound process to enable educationalists to become age responsive learning providers, by embedding the SASSI approach and developing concrete learning activities accordingly. Finally, a European label will be developed, as a tangible sign to recognize and reward the efforts made by the enterprises in empowering their 50+ employees through embedding the SASSI methodology into their CPD system.