Earlier this year I wrote a note on 100 Years of the German Volkshochschulen (vhs) as community-based adult education centers. In 1919 the Weimarer Republic was the first democracy in Germany that followed on the end of WW1, and also the end our emperor system. In the constitution of this new democracy there is the clause: Adult education, including the Volkshochschulen should be supported at national, provincial, and local level. This being a constitutional matter later led to the support which policy, legislation and financing brings to adult education as a system.

In this edition of the L&W Newsletter you should note in particular several calls for papers relating to international conferences: the 22nd GeNeMe Conference "Communities in New Media" in Dresden, the TVET Conference 2020 in Pretoria (see Conferences) and the Cedefop/OECD symposium on apprenticeship (see Networks and Organisations); also a call for applications for the IPEP Winter School 2019 in Verona (see Programmes and Projects); calls for contributions to the Edited book for UFHRD and the Handbook of research on TVET (see Publications), and calls for proposals for the VET Research Award 2019 and the new EMCC Research Award (see Networks and Organisations). And not to overlook: the vacancy announcements for positions at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (see Networks and Organisations)!