Brussel, 20 December 2024

Training our members in project writing and advocacy

As part of its EU funded work plan for 2024, ECSWE provided training opportunities for member associations and schools in Europe. These were tailored inputs from the ECSWE office and peer-to-peer consultations between the members.

Empowering our members to successfully write EU projects

Build­ing on the suc­cess­ful series of webi­na­rs on Eras­mus+ that were car­ried out for our mem­bers in 2023, this year our project coor­di­na­tor Már­ti Domokos offered a webi­nar on acquir­ing the qual­i­ty label with­in the Eras­mus+ pro­gramme. This form of accred­i­ta­tion enables schools and oth­er organ­i­sa­tions to prove their abil­i­ty to suc­cess­ful­ly design and imple­ment projects co-fund­ed by the Euro­pean Union and to make them eli­gi­ble to receive mobil­i­ty funds in a sim­pli­fied way. An edu­ca­tion insti­tu­tion can main­ly ben­e­fit from Eras­mus+ pro­gramme key action (KA1) for mobil­i­ty of groups or indi­vid­u­als and key action (KA2) for coop­er­a­tion among organ­i­sa­tions and institutions.

Offering training on advocacy and public relations

From March to June 2024, ECSWE car­ried out four mod­ules of an online advo­ca­cy train­ing tai­lored to the needs of Stein­er Wal­dorf asso­ci­a­tions and schools on local, region­al and nation­al lev­el. Some top­ics cov­ered in the mod­ules were par­lia­ment and gov­ern­ment lob­by­ing, coop­er­a­tion with stake­hold­ers, polit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion, cri­sis man­age­ment, and asso­ci­a­tion man­age­ment. Hosts of the mod­ules were our man­ag­ing direc­tor Georg Jür­gens, advo­ca­cy and PR coor­di­na­tor Dora Šimunović, and PR con­sul­tant Daniel Her­ring, while con­tri­bu­tions also came from our mem­bers’ nation­al-lev­el advo­ca­cy expe­ri­ence in Slove­nia, France, Switzer­land, Den­mark, the Unit­ed King­dom, the Nether­lands, Flan­ders, and Lithuania.

Supporting small national associations of Steiner Waldorf schools

Dif­fer­ent state reg­u­la­tions affect­ing Stein­er Wal­dorf schools across our mem­ber­ship large­ly deter­mine the abil­i­ty for our schools and asso­ci­a­tions to grow and flour­ish. Still, both exter­nal and inter­nal fac­tors explain inequal­i­ties between the devel­op­ment and strength of Stein­er Wal­dorf edu­ca­tion in Europe. To tack­le that prob­lem, the ECSWE office, board, and mem­bers have estab­lished a work­ing group that reg­u­lar­ly meets to joint­ly exam­ine the spe­cif­ic sit­u­a­tion of every nation­al asso­ci­a­tion in need for struc­tur­al sup­port and to pro­vide tai­lored advice. The group has been very active in 2024 and will con­tin­ue its man­date through­out the next year as well.

Further reading