Brussel, 22 December 2023

The European Union approves our operating grant for 2023

This May, the European Commission transferred the first instalment, to fund our networking activities, capacity building and joint advocacy for Steiner Waldorf schools in Europe in 2023.

The 2023 work plan includes six work packages

Towards the end of 2022, our pres­i­dent, man­ag­ing direc­tor, and project coor­di­na­tor wrote an appli­ca­tion for a frame­work part­ner­ship agree­ment (FPA) of 3 years that would qual­i­fy ECSWE for EU fund­ing for civ­il soci­ety organ­i­sa­tions in the field of edu­ca­tion and train­ing in the 2023–2025 peri­od. Addi­tion­al­ly, they designed a detailed plan for 2023 that focus­es on six work pack­ages: gen­er­al man­age­ment of the organ­i­sa­tion, mem­ber calls, the­mat­ic net­work­ing, frame­work cur­ricu­lum for Stein­er Wal­dorf schools, capac­i­ty build­ing of mem­bers, and com­mu­ni­ca­tion and dis­sem­i­na­tion. After the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion pos­i­tive­ly assessed this appli­ca­tion, the imple­men­ta­tion of this plan could start.

In the first year we focused on exploring our members’ needs

To have a bet­ter under­stand­ing of our mem­bers’ needs and our capac­i­ties to meet those needs, we organ­ised indi­vid­ual online meet­ings with 25 of our mem­bers through­out 2023. These two-hour con­ver­sa­tions were built on the data we already had from the first round of such calls car­ried out in 2021. Con­clu­sions of these calls show that our mem­bers need more sup­port when it comes to teacher train­ing, finan­cial sus­tain­abil­i­ty, cur­ricu­lum devel­op­ment and recog­ni­tion, nation­al lev­el advo­ca­cy, and pub­lic rela­tions, to name a few. See the full list and cor­re­la­tion between these chal­lenges here.

Working on a Steiner Waldorf curriculum, addressing teacher training and leadership

As most of the chal­lenges expressed by our mem­bers rely on effec­tive school and organ­i­sa­tion­al lead­er­ship, in 2023 we pro­vid­ed capac­i­ty build­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for our mem­bers dur­ing our Feb­ru­ary and Octo­ber coun­cil meet­ings. Addi­tion­al­ly, in 2023 our ped­a­gog­i­cal advi­sor Mar­tyn Raw­son worked on a fea­si­bil­i­ty study explor­ing the devel­op­ment of a macro-lev­el Stein­er Wal­dorf cur­ricu­lum. Based on the study, it became clear that devel­op­ing such a cur­ricu­lum is fea­si­ble and can be done as part of our 2024 and 2025 work plans.

Further reading