Home / Strategic pathways
Strategic pathways
Five connected strategic pathways guide I-STEP Network from access and belonging to skills, training, employability and meaningful participation.
I-STEP organises its work around five pathways: Inclusive, Skills, Training, Employability and Participation. Each one is also a strategic group, a working community that develops methods, resources and joint projects. Read together, they describe how a person moves from access, to skills, to learning, to work and to having a say.
The progression
Each pathway builds on the one before it. Inclusion comes first because access and belonging make everything else possible. The route then develops useful skills, turns them into structured learning, connects that learning with employment and enterprise, and ensures that people participate in the decisions that affect them.
The strategic groups
Each strategic group brings together member organisations and practitioners working in that field. They compare experience, develop methods, produce shared resources and prepare joint projects. Select a pathway to see what the group does and what it produces.
Inclusive
Inclusion is where the network starts. We build access, representation and equity into every method from the first day.
Explore the pathway →SSkills
We help people develop competences that transfer between life, learning and work, and make those competences visible.
Explore the pathway →TTraining
We design learning and practical resources for educators and practitioners, and support exchange between them.
Explore the pathway →EEmployability
We connect learning with work through mentoring, guidance, entrepreneurship support and competence validation.
Explore the pathway →PParticipation
We involve people and communities as co-authors of the projects and decisions that affect them.
Explore the pathway →Why they connect
I-STEP does not treat the pathways as five separate themes. Inclusion is the foundation that shapes everything else. Skills and Training build what people can do. Employability turns that capacity into work and enterprise. Participation ensures that people have a say in how opportunities, services and communities are shaped. Because one initiative often touches several pathways, the groups share methods, evidence and people.