13th Adult Learners´ Week 8-15 October 2010

The slogan of this year’s Adult Learners’ Week (ALW) took us a step closer to the recognition of the experience and skills that different generations have, and enabled us to draw attention to the importance of taking time for each other. Besides the already traditional national events, such as the touching opening ceremony in Mooste, Põlva County; the e-Learning Day; the Grundtvig Day; and the Adult Education Forum, there was a number of different events where representatives of different generations could take part together.

The great value of the ALW network lies in the people who are able to inspire others and willingly initiate different activities in every county of Estonia. The voluntary people that gather around the regional coordinators as support groups are the ones that organise a diverse range of events during that week in October. The preparatory work of the ALW goes on all the year round, though. In April, 270 members of these regional support groups attended the training days in Tartu, Tallinn, Narva, Kuressaare, and Paide in order to work out the ideas for different activities for the ALW.

As it is the Year of Reading, many of the ALW events took place in the libraries which have become active and relevant cooperation partners of the ALW network in many counties. A lot of information on adult education finds its way to the readers from these learning-friendly environments.

It is again possible to share and compare our networking experience with the foreign partners. The project „Sowing the Learning Seeds“ funded by the European Union Grundtvig Adult Education Programme started this year with AEAE Andras as a coordinator organisation enabling us to cooperate with adult education organisations from Ireland, Hungary, Slovenia, the Netherlands, Turkey and France.

 

Long live ALW! We look forward to seeing you next year!