LIDEA conference on development education in schools and youth organisations

On the 24th of September 2009, the Lithuanian development education network LIDEA held a conference about „Development education in schools and youth organisations“. It took place in the Kolping house in Kaunas. Representatives from the ministries of foreign affairs and education, from the education department of Kaunas municipality, youth organisations, directors and teachers of different Lithuanian schools participated in the conference.

"Lithuania - being a member of the EU - is a donor country and has the responsibility to help others. Aiming at Lithuania's support to be more efficient, we need to pay more attention to inform our society members, to give them a better understanding what is education about development cooperation", says Lina Kalibataite, co-founder of LIDEA. "It is very important to help young people to understand the priorities of global development and to raise awareness for cooperation and communication with people from developing countries. After five years being a member of EU, Lithuanian citizens still know very little about what it means to be a donor country."

After some welcome speeches by NGO and governmental representatives, the participants of the conference were introduced to the concept of development cooperation, aims of development education and millenium development goals. They also shared practical development education (DE) experiences in schools and youth organisations and within programmes like GLEN (http://www.glen-europe.org/) or the annual DE summer school, and talked a lot about possibilities of cooperation between schools and youth organisations and NGOs working in DE.

There were interesting discussions about the cooperation between NGOs and schools and between NGOs and ministries linked to the DE field. It was agreed that LIDEA will be sharing information about DE with schools, issue a monthly newsletter about DE and education about development cooperation and provide schools with methodological material for teachers which will help them to integrate the topic into their lessons.

For further information about the conference, please contact Lina Kalibataite at Lina.Kalibataite@kolping.lt

Information provided by Lina Kalibataite, Lithuanian Kolping Society