We are please to announce that we can welcome two new associate partners to our growing network, which help us to reach out to a wider audience and bring in their international experience, IFIP and the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences.

• IFIP (International Federation of Information Processing) is the leading multinational organization in Information & Communications Technologies and Sciences. Its AGORA initiative aims to implement a dynamic methodology for initiating cooperation projects on Lifelong Learning with stakeholders such as UNESCO, UNITAR, the Digital Solidarity Fund and other IFIP Technical committees.The methodology takes into account that there is not one solution to Lifelong Learning and also that a lot of preliminary work still has to be done on issues such as reference competencies for LLL, e-portfolio and competency recognition, before effective implementation of LLL can be made a reality. Agora planning meetings provide a forum for: sharing knowledge, facilitating networking of stakeholders and developing synergy, outlining cooperative projects to address the issues in the framework of main international programmes, defining a work process for continued planning and cooperation.
• The ICT Commission of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences (SATW) has working groups in e-Education, e-Health, and e-Society, and is highly interested into joint activities with MATURE in areas like Learning Organization, e-Portfolio, Competence Management & Recognition, Knowledge Management and knowledge sharing.