It is never too late and never too early!

“It is never too late and never too early to engage in development education,” concludes one of the participants of the project “Schools – satellites for development education” in Latvia. This 2 years project is the first most serious and systematic attempt to introduce development education in Latvia. 9 schools from different regions of Latvia are trained to be the “satellites” sending out global education signals and messages in local universe. In each school team there are 9 participants representing different stakeholders of an education process – 4 teachers, 1 school administration representative, 2 students and 2 local community members (municipality representative, entrepreneur, active parent or an active local citizen).

With the help of EC funding and co-funding of Soros Foundation – Latvia as well as the US Embassy and expertise of different local and foreign experts the project team has motivated project schools to integrate the global dimension in both formal and informal education. They thus create public awareness and understanding of different development issues here in Latvia.

Evidences of the great success are results of the 1st project year - more than 130 development education lessons and trainings have been delivered involving about 2700 schoolchildren and covering such topics as migration, ecological footprint and environment, sustainable development and responsible attitude towards resources, globalization and others. Project members have also implemented around 20 development education actions in their schools or communities trying out a wide range of different formats – activities in the city festivals, creative workshops, development education days or project weeks at the school, contests, regional conferences, researches and surveys.

Another project success is the impact on the political level. In the end of year 2010 the State Centre of Content of Education of the Ministry of Education and Science has approved the program for the professional development of teachers “The Development and Administration of the Development Education Projects” that was created by project’s applicant “Education development center”. During the program other 350 Latvian teachers will be instructed about the topics of development education (amounting to 24 academic hours of training) in the period of 2010 – 2013, ensuring a long term sustainability of development education in the education system of Latvia.

The project “Schools – satellites for development education” (DCI-NSA ED/2009/202-219) is implemented by the Education Development Center (Latvia) in partnership with GLEN Latvia (Latvia) and Leeds Development Education Center (UK). Project’s web page is http://www.skolaskasateliti.lv/

Information provided by Ilze Saleniece, Education Development Center