The COVID-19 pandemic, the armed conflicts on European soil, and the rapidly changing society, have deepened people’s distress in the field of mental health. People of all ages, who were already experiencing individual distress before the pandemic, were particularly vulnerable. The target audience for adult education programmes is an audience that is facing certain changes – this can be family circumstances (children becoming independent, changes in family dynamics, etc.), career circumstances (employers’ demands, the impact of digitisation on changed work processes, a lag in the possession of skills for quality work, etc.), etc., but also the impact of the crisis on the quality of work, the impact of digitisation on the quality of work, etc. The target audience aged between 40 and 60 is finding it more difficult to adapt to all these changes, as well as to the changes brought about by the lack of access to various activities as a result of the pandemic. This maladaptation results in self-doubt and general dissatisfaction, which in turn affects the quality of participation in the various adult education programmes, including early exit from these programmes. The challenges faced by adult organisations are mainly the lack of motivation of the participants in our programmes, the poorer impact on the participants, the early departure of the participants, the stress of the trainers when the objectives are not achieved, etc.

The project will address the above challenges by developing a methodology for adult educators to foster happiness among adults. We will develop and implement a new, attractive tool – the dissatisfaction escape room – as part of the developed methodology.

The methodology will be made available to all adult educators, as well as other sectors (youth workers, teachers, social workers) to use at the beginning of each training programme to first create a sense of value and satisfaction among the participants. In this way, participants will be more motivated for the next steps of the educational process in which they are involved.