The project targets personnel at orphanage institutions who are often notqualified to offer the necessary professional care, and quite oftenprofessional leadership is lacking. Especially small children are sufferingfrom the lack of even the most basic human contact and care. One of theaims of the FAIRstart project is to address complexity of problems for theorphanage environment as a whole by offering an easily accessibletraining and empowerment model to all interested staff of Europeanorphanages. This consists among other things of multilingual basic andvery visual learning material for care-givers working in the orphanages(web-based and DVD-based) as well as a multimedia website and aHandbook. The FAIRstart products and outputs also include study visits,training mobility and networking opportunities for orphanage staff andmanagers, a European conference, a tested set of quality indicators andthe involvement of the orphanage staff in the testing of the trainingmaterial. Finally, the FAIRstart project will also provide politicalrecommendations for the Commission and other policy-makers atnational and European level with particular focus on the basic learningability.It is envisaged that the FAIRstart project will have a number of short-termand long-term effects on the project’s target groups. Among other thingsit will have a large impact on the participating orphanages, staff,managers and children alike and also on the educational institutionsdeveloping the training material and a number of European lifelonglearning environments addressing similar issues. And just as important, afirst impact on the Commission’s lifelong learning policies and strategies.The above will be developed through the project’s dissemination andexploitation strategy to incorporate orphanages or similar institutions andlifelong learning and research environments on an even larger scale bothwithin Europe and beyond. Finally, the project will contribute to thedevelopment of a European Qualification Framework for orphanage staffand of a Basic Learning Ability Awareness and with it a disseminationand awareness of the European Social Model also beyond Europe.