The name DOLCETA was originally derived from ‘Developing On-Line Consumer Education and Training for Adults’. When the project had put the first few topics in the public domain, we retained ‘DOLCETA’ because it was already becoming known but simply called it On-line Consumer Education.

The whole project started in December 2003 when the first of 5 framework contracts with DGSANCO was signed. During 8 years we developed 8 modules on different topics in 28 country versions (the 27 member States with 2 versions for Belgium), keeping the information up to date and disseminating widely in the last couple of years. There was a team of experts in each country to develop the materials for that country and a central team of EUCEN staff led by Pat Davies, a technical team in Média animations led by Delphine Verstraete and close collaboration with the European Association for the Education of Adults (EAEA) through Marta Lottes.

The final handover to the new contractors was on 31 January 2012 who will carry on the work of updating and developing new topics.

The aims of the project were to assist in raising the level of awareness and understanding of European consumer rights in the Member States and to develop interactive web-based tools for consumer education to be used primarily by ‘multipliers’: teachers, trainers and adult educators in educational institutions, government bodies with consumer responsibilities, consumer associations etc. The web-site is of course also available to individual adult consumers directly.

The topics are:

• Consumer rights
• Financial services
• Product safety
• Consumer Education for Teachers
• Sustainable consumption
• Services (energy, communications, transport)
• Financial Literacy for Teachers
• Food safety

Each module is designed to be:

• accessible and user friendly
• available in all the official languages of the 27 Member States
• created by experts in the consumer protection, law and regulation at European and national level for each topic, in pedagogy and in on-line learning
• tested with a mixed group of around 10 learners and/or teachers in each Member State, drawn from the target groups
• reviewed and evaluators by international experts
• supported by an on-line users’ guide, web links, contacts and other sources of further information

The site is now in the hands of the new contractors: http://www.dolceta.eu/

Please, follow this link to see the interview made with Pat Davies, Director of this project, in March 2011 (during the LLL Week Fair at the European Parliament).