EU Operating Grant

Work plan 2023

Thanks to fund­ing pro­vid­ed by the Euro­pean Union in April 2023, this year marks a cru­cial moment for our organ­i­sa­tion. While our mem­bers great­ly appre­ci­ate our EU lev­el advo­ca­cy, there is a press­ing need for more capac­i­ty build­ing and net­work­ing, both inter­nal­ly and externally.

Mem­ber asso­ci­a­tions seek sup­port to improve their own nation­al lev­el advo­ca­cy, enhance edu­ca­tion qual­i­ty, pro­mote age-appro­pri­ate cur­ric­u­la, pro­vide high qual­i­ty teacher train­ing, and facil­i­tate effec­tive school lead­er­ship in mem­ber schools.

This year’s focus is on becom­ing a learn­ing organ­i­sa­tion, address­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty, lead­er­ship, and qual­i­ty care con­nect­ing EU-lev­el poli­cies to schools, teach­ers, and parents.

ECSWE’s plans for 2023 include capac­i­ty-build­ing events, organ­i­sa­tion­al devel­op­ment, and engag­ing with mem­bers and part­ners. We have there­fore defined six work pack­ages that will help us reach these goals.

Our work packages

Management and advocacy

Member calls

Networking

Framework curriculum

Capacity building

PR and dissemination

How to read the status indicators?

Not started

Ongoing

Done

Work package 1

Management and advocacy

Grant management and finances

As part of this work pack­age we will man­age grant admin­is­tra­tion and finances, adhere to project process­es, mon­i­tor time­lines and deliv­er­ables, and main­tain effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the agency in charge (EACEA).

Strengthening our advocacy

As part of this work pack­age, we will also mon­i­tor edu­ca­tion-relat­ed pol­i­cy devel­op­ment at EU lev­el, engage in stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tions, and host pol­i­cy-focused events at Euro­pean level.

Create a green travel guide for meetings and conferences

The guide helps us to low­er the envi­ron­men­tal impact of our meet­ings and con­fer­ences and offers a frame­work for mea­sur­ing, off­set­ting, and min­i­miz­ing the car­bon foot­print of our travel.

Review and improve our solidarity fund

The new fund­ing cri­te­ria are based on macro­eco­nom­ic indi­ca­tors and the finan­cial capa­bil­i­ty of each mem­ber asso­ci­a­tion and are meant to make our meet­ings more accessible.

Work package 2

Member calls

Review and analyse the member calls of 2020/21

Our mem­bers calls of  2020 and 2021 still lack an in-depth meta-lev­el analy­sis. As part of this work plan, they will be reviewed and and analysed with the aim of inform­ing and improv­ing our 2023 edition.

Develop a concept note for the member calls in 2023

The eval­u­a­tion of the pre­vi­ous calls informs our con­cept note for the 2023 edi­tion of the calls. A for­mat will be cho­sen that enables and informs the imple­men­ta­tion of this work plan in an effec­tive and effi­cient way.

Conduct member calls with at least 18 member associations

Our aim is to speak to at least two thirds of our mem­bers. The calls will last 2 hours and will build on a pre-call ques­tion­naire that will be joint­ly reviewed and expand­ed dur­ing the call.

Use call results for drafting our 2024 work plan

The out­comes of the calls will help us to bet­ter meet our mem­bers needs and will also serve as the foun­da­tion for estab­lish­ing real­is­tic and achiev­able goals for our 2024 work plan.

Analyse member call results in a detailed report

The analy­sis focus­es on the roles, work­ing struc­ture, and resources of our mem­ber asso­ci­a­tions, high­lights the most com­mon mem­ber chal­lenges and sum­maris­es their cur­rent needs and expec­ta­tions from ECSWE.

Work package 3

Networking

Mapping good practice in green education and sustainability

This map­ping will iden­ti­fy good prac­tices in schools and mem­ber asso­ci­a­tions but also with­in school cur­ric­u­la. The insights gath­ered through this effort are intend­ed to inform future ini­tia­tives and projects of ECSWE.

Online event exploring leadership and the art of listening 

In Feb­ru­ary 2023, ECSWE will host an online event titled “The Art of Lis­ten­ing: How to Pre­vent Con­flict Through Lis­ten­ing.” This event is designed for ECSWE mem­bers and per­ma­nent guests

Conduct feasibility study on school and association leadership

The fea­si­bil­i­ty study exam­ines approach­es for address­ing school lead­er­ship and asso­ci­a­tion man­age­ment with­in the Wal­dorf frame­work and will inform lead­er­ship-focused peer learn­ing and good prac­tice exchange.

Mapping quality care practices in Waldorf settings

This ini­tia­tive will iden­ti­fy forms of inter­nal and exter­nal qual­i­ty care. It will dis­tin­guish Wal­dorf-spe­cif­ic prac­tices from inspec­tions man­dat­ed by gov­ern­ment author­i­ties. The out­come will be a suc­cinct dig­i­tal report.

Creating a working group framework

The new frame­work defines the scope, mem­ber­ship, process of cre­ation, life-cycle and expect­ed out­comes of ECSWE’s the­mat­ic work­ing groups and also includes a tem­plate facil­i­tat­ing the cre­ation of work­ing groups.

Event on strengthening cooperation between parents and teachers

The event will be host­ed in April 2023 in Italy and use non-for­mal learn­ing meth­ods to engage par­tic­i­pants. It is open to ECSWE mem­bers, par­ent rep­re­sen­ta­tives, per­ma­nent guests, as well as local teach­ers and parents.

Work package 4

Framework Curriculum

Summarise results of curriculum colloquium of October 2022

The sum­ma­ry of the col­lo­qui­um in Gent, Bel­gium, will fea­ture keynote speech­es and col­lab­o­ra­tive work as well as ideas and good prac­tices shared by par­tic­i­pants. The work involves sort­ing, assess­ing, and dis­sem­i­nat­ing the outcomes.

Conducting a feasibility study for a European framework curriculum

The study address­es the need iden­ti­fied by mem­ber fed­er­a­tions for a com­mon macro-lev­el cur­ricu­lum that can be adapt­ed by nation­al fed­er­a­tions based on nation­al-lev­el require­ments. It will draw on input from our mem­ber calls.

Taking first steps to develop a sustainability curriculum

In 2023, the process of craft­ing a sus­tain­abil­i­ty frame­work cur­ricu­lum begins with two key steps: The iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of rel­e­vant experts from mem­ber coun­tries and an explo­ration of the Green­Comp frame­work as a pos­si­ble base.

Work package 5

Capacity building

Identifying obstacles of smaller and newer member organisations

This ini­tia­tive sum­maris­es chal­lenges our mem­bers face with regards to estab­lish­ing pro­fes­sion­al work­ing struc­tures for advo­ca­cy, PR and asso­ci­a­tion man­age­ment at nation­al lev­el, con­sid­er­ing also their finan­cial and human resources.

Building Capacity for ERASMUS+ Projects

This train­ing focus­es on the design and prepa­ra­tion of suc­cess­ful Eras­mus+ projects. It also includes webi­na­rs for schools on teacher and stu­dent mobil­i­ties and a ded­i­cat­ed mod­ule on school accreditation.

Identifying and meeting members training needs

Based on our mem­bers calls, this ini­tia­tive iden­ti­fies the train­ing needs of our mem­bers in advo­ca­cy, lead­er­ship, pub­lic rela­tions, and cri­sis com­mu­ni­ca­tion and will help us devel­op tai­lored train­ing mod­ules in 2024 and 2025.

Event on the European dimension of education

The event will raise aware­ness of EU edu­ca­tion pol­i­cy and its rel­e­vance for Wal­dorf schools, and explore our mem­bers shared chal­lenges in the fields of school lead­er­ship, asso­ci­a­tion man­age­ment and nation­al lev­el advocacy.

Work package 6

PR and dissemination

Allocating more working time and training to PR

The addi­tion­al work­ing time and train­ing will help us to bet­ter meet the com­mu­ni­ca­tion needs of our mem­bers and oth­er tar­get audi­ences and enable our team to cre­ate effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion material.

Define a process enabling staff to create tailored PR campaigns

Once our com­mu­ni­ca­tion themes and tar­get audi­ences are defined, our team can start to cre­ate more tai­lored PR cam­paigns. For this, we seek to estab­lish a clear work­ing and deci­sion mak­ing process.

Implement one campaign per work package

To ensure broad dis­sem­i­na­tion of this work plan, we com­mit to imple­ment one com­mu­ni­ca­tion cam­paign for each work pack­age that will use at least two inter­nal or exter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion channels.

Encourage better dissemination of ECSWE’s work at national level

To enhance our mem­bers’ dis­sem­i­na­tion efforts of ECSWE’s work, we will fur­nish them with tan­gi­ble resources for shar­ing our work. The cre­ation of this land­ing page is just one con­crete exam­ple of such resources.

Any questions?

Frans Ebskamp, Treasurer

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