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About I-STEP Network
I-STEP Network is an international network of organisations. We work on education, social inclusion, employability, democratic participation and international cooperation, and we bring together civil society organisations, educational actors, trainers and institutions from different countries. Our work is transversal: it cuts across learning settings instead of belonging to one sector, which is why it stays useful in very different contexts.
Our story
I-STEP grew out of an observation its members kept running into. The hardest questions in education rarely belong to one sector. How do you make learning more inclusive? How do you build skills that transfer? How do you support the educators doing the work? How do you connect learning to a job? How do you make sure people take part? Instead of treating these as separate problems, the network works on them as one route.
That route gives the network its name. People and organisations move from access, to skills, to training, to employability, and on to participation. The five letters of I-STEP are the steps along the way, and they shape how the network organises its work.
I-STEP works through non-formal education, participatory learning and structured cooperation between organisations. We care most about results that hold up in practice: toolkits, training, open educational resources, competence frameworks and mentoring models that organisations, educators and learners can actually use.
Mission and values
I-STEP helps organisations and practitioners build initiatives that are inclusive, evidence-based and useful, and that make a real difference across different communities and learning settings.
Our approach
We treat inclusion as a structural principle, not an extra topic. It shapes how a method is designed, run and evaluated, and it keeps the focus on the barriers people actually face: economic disadvantage, gender inequality, limited access to learning, digital gaps and discrimination. Because these barriers overlap, we work with an intersectional approach.
The international side matters. Members and collaborators bring experience from different countries, so the network can compare what works, exchange practice and build solutions that adapt to different communities. Local realities and wider European challenges inform each other.
We also connect evidence with practice. The network links research with frontline work and produces analyses, comparative studies and practice guides that close the gap between what is known, what policy says, and what practitioners and learners deal with every day.
How the network works
I-STEP is organised around five strategic pathways. Each pathway is also a strategic group: a working community of member organisations and practitioners that develops methods, resources and joint projects in its field. The groups stay connected, because the whole point of the network is that inclusion, skills, training, employability and participation belong together.
Members bring their own expertise and context, take part in joint projects and peer learning, and adapt shared methods to their communities. The network produces the common outputs, the frameworks, toolkits, training and research, that no single organisation would build on its own.
| Type | International network of organisations |
|---|---|
| Legal form | Non-governmental organisation |
| Headquarters | Alicante, Spain |
| Where we work | Across our member countries in Europe |
| Focus areas | Inclusion, Skills, Training, Employability and Participation |
| Contact | office@istep-network.org |
Work with the network
If your organisation works on inclusion, skills, training, employability or participation, there is a place for you here.