Brussel, 21 December 2023

Strengthening capacity of national Steiner Waldorf associations

Throughout 2023, we provided workshops on leadership, advocacy, and project writing, with the aim of strengthening the professional capacity of our members. We will continue this work in 2024.

Offering capacity building opportunities for our members

In order to sup­port the work of nation­al Stein­er Wal­dorf asso­ci­a­tions, in 2023 we offered our mem­bers oppor­tu­ni­ties to deep­en their under­stand­ing and build their capac­i­ty in the areas of lead­er­ship, advo­ca­cy, and project writ­ing. In order to do so, we invit­ed experts in these fields, whose pre­sen­ta­tions were sup­port­ed by our office team. The year start­ed with ses­sions on per­son­al lead­er­ship brought to us by Bar­bara Orms­by dur­ing our Feb­ru­ary coun­cil meet­ing, and con­tin­ued on the themes of school and asso­ci­a­tion lead­er­ship dur­ing our con­fer­ence “Per­spec­tives on Lead­er­ship” co-organ­ised with IMO Inter­na­tion­al on 20 and 21 Octo­ber in Eindhoven.

Understanding synergies between European and national policies

On 21 Octo­ber, as part of our coun­cil meet­ing, our mem­bers learned more about actions with­in the Euro­pean Edu­ca­tion Area. Andrei Frank, pol­i­cy offi­cer at the Life­long Learn­ing Plat­form, pre­sent­ed actions on blend­ed learn­ing, mobil­i­ty, green tran­si­tions, path­ways to schools suc­cess, and dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion in edu­ca­tion. He pre­sent­ed ways for civ­il soci­ety stake­hold­ers to influ­ence the cre­ation and imple­men­ta­tion of such actions on the Euro­pean lev­el through open pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions and mem­ber­ship in the Euro­pean Commission’s work­ing groups. He also explained how such actions can be used as frame­works for nation­al advo­ca­cy efforts.

Unveiling European funds for Steiner Waldorf teachers and students

In Novem­ber and Decem­ber, ECSWE organ­ised three webi­na­rs on writ­ing project appli­ca­tions, with empha­sis on Eras­mus+. Our expe­ri­enced project coor­di­na­tor, Már­ti Domokos, shared how Wal­dorf schools and asso­ci­a­tions can get accred­it­ed and suc­cess­ful­ly apply for mobil­i­ty and part­ner­ship projects by match­ing their spe­cif­ic needs with fund­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties offered by the Eras­mus+ pro­gramme. Using inter­ac­tive meth­ods, Már­ti cre­at­ed a space for exchange that gath­ered about 40 par­tic­i­pants from 14 coun­tries. To help them write appli­ca­tions, she will arrange a fol­low-up con­sul­ta­tion and a new round of webinars.

Further reading