We are very pleased to report that over the last few weeks, a number of new towns, cities and organisations have joined PASCAL's Learning Cities Networks (LCN). For convenience links with each of these are found below.

The city of Cotonou, Benin is the commercial hub of the country and is at an early stage of its development. Its involvement in LCN has been brokered by Professor Idowu Biao, a long time friend of PASCAL, who after completing his tenure at the University of Botswana, has returned to his home country. He is doing great things there, and we are working with him in the arrangement of a major conference next year in Benin on lifelong learning. News of that event will follow shortly.

In Europe, we welcome the region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia in Northern-Eastern Italy. PASCAL has previously connected with the city of Udine in the province and Università della Liberetà, and we are very pleased to be able to continue this work with the region as a whole. Further east we welcome the small district of Korma in Belarus, which is located in the north-eastern part of the Gomel region, and close to the Chernobyl nuclear incident, which has had significant challenges not least because of effects on the environment and population outflow. Our connection with Korma has been facilitated through our co-operation with DVVI, following discussions between the organisation and PASCAL, and we look forward to extended membership from organisations within its remit.

Quite independently in the Ukraine, an adjacent country to Belarus, and following visits by LCN co-ordinator, Rob Mark, Mariupol Learning City, Ukraine and the Donetsk State University of Management have joined the network. During the last five years, Mariupol has provided a home for almost 100,000 internally displaced persons from Donetsk, following the conflict between Russian and Ukraine in the Crimea. It has focused heavily on developing a learning culture as a response to the challenges it faces.

The City of Wolverhampton in the West Midlands of England has been building its learning city through the Wolverhampton City Learning Region (WCLR) initiative, which involves strong partnership with a range of providers and builds on a strong tradition of lifelong learning in the area.

Derry and Strablane join their colleagues from the south, Cork, and Limerick, adding PASCAL LCN as part of a comprehensive Learning City plan after "it became clear that Lifelong Learning could have a very important role in helping overcome the challenges which face the Region".

Finally Wyndham City, on the western edge of Melbourne, Victoria in south-eastern Australia has had a longstanding commitment to creating vibrant learning communities as is evident in its profile. This includes a major annual learning festival.

We welcome all of these new members and we are anticipating significant activity from them all over the next few months.

LCN Participants, April 2020 [click to go to the LCN site]