The Third Regional Summer Academy of the Eastern Neighborhood supported by representative office DVV International in Ukraine took place near Kyiv in the village Glebovka from the 27 of June to the 4 of July. The main purpose of the event was the formation of a common theoretical and conceptual platform to support the development of modern policy and practice of lifelong learning (LLL) and adult education (AE) in Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova.
There were invited representatives of organizations, working in the field of human resource development in the AE and LLL, as well as representatives of state agencies, educational institutions, NGOs of Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and the staff of national offices of DVV International.
Team of international experts, namely: Katarina Popovic, PhD, project coordinator of Regional Office DVV International in South-Eastern Europe (Serbia), Annie Karttunen, expert on European educational policy of the European center for educational policy expertise “Savo” (Finland), Toms Urdze, director of consulting company for educational services “ICD Riga” (Latvia), Anita Jacobson, Ph.D., regional director of DVV International in Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova, has developed a rich program for participants and created an atmosphere highly conducive to learning. Based on own experience with the help of presentations, discussions, sessions, questions and answers, experts offered the best practical solutions in the development of AE national systems.
As new and informative topics in the AE system participants noted «validation of informal and non-formal learning", “Lifelong guidance”, "quality assurance and assessment in validation and lifelong guidance." In addition, by detailed and deep analysis of such components in AE as strategic planning, governance of LLL, professional development of staff, the work in groups became more effective.
Participants from presented countries built country teams for working on the development of strategic plan on AE national system . Working in national teams, participants shared their visions and understanding, proposed new approaches and ideas in AE systems and its strategic development. For this purpose participants were tasked to: model user groups and its needs; identify the main components of AE system such as content and form, allocation of responsibilities, legal structure, financing models, recognition of skills; as well as to define the real situation around the AE and everyone involved, what are the main challenges on the way to creation of the planned system. This whole process was accompanied by lively discussions, negotiations, workouts, contributing to the group dynamics.
By the end of the Third Regional Summer Academy participants presented the concepts of national strategies on AE development by the year 2020. For the further information as well as experiences and knowledge exchange, it was created online platform - http://e.saliedet.lv by the one of experts Toms Urdze. In this way participants can improve targeted plans with a constant access to the expert resource.