News Archive

Despite the lockdowns and restrictions caused by covid-19, a lot has been happening in the 22 July and democratic citizenship program. “The program is buzzing with activity, and we are excited to be on our way to a “new normal”. Bringing engaged students and youth back to Utøya, developing a new digital democracy learning platform, and arranging a national training course for teachers affected by the terror attacks 22 July 2011, are some of the plans this fall,” says project manager Ingrid Aspelund.

The European Wergeland Centre is a learning centre and in the context of Covid-19 this has become truer than ever. Emerging issues rising from the pandemic gives increased relevance to education for democracy, human rights and intercultural understanding. The centre explores new ways of working with focus on digital learning and new platforms, a process that started before the pandemic, but that has been intensified because of it.

“It is important to strengthen the democratic competences of children and youth, and it is important that we manage to talk and teach about the 22 July terror attacks in a good way to today’s students. I am proud of the work done and believe this contributes to prepare our most important community institution – the school – to do exactly this”, said Guri Melby, Minister of Education of Norway when she officially launched the new learning resources on 22 July last week.

Wanting a more involved school community and recognizing the potential of the student council to become a real representation and co-management body, the Tallin Laaga School and Kindergarten in Estonia participated at the EWC Baltic Regional Summer Academy in 2019. Since then a lot has happened, and they even won the Active Student Council Award 2020, a competition organized by the Department of Education of the city of Tallin.

EWC continues to support the important work being done in the ongoing Ukrainian school-reform with a newly launched project aimed at pre-school education. The project, which is carried out within the Schools for Democracy programme, will support the development of the new pre-school curriculum and build capacity of kindergarten teachers to implement it.

Last year we celebrated EWC trainer Natalia Kidalova as she won the title of Ukraine’s best teacher in the Global Teacher Prize Ukraine 2019. This year we are happy to see more familiar faces among the top-50 finalists.

Due to national regulations on Covid-19 infection control, The European Wergeland Centre had to postpone all education activities at Utøya island this spring. As Norwegian society is gradually reopening and restrictions are being lifted, we can finally welcome students and teachers at Utøya again.

The Council of Europes’ Reference Framework for Democratic Culture (RFCDC) held a central role when EWC presented experiences from the Schools for Democracy project in Ukraine, and how they have dealt with the challenges presented by the covid-19 pandemic, at an international e-conference promoting European ideas in education in early June.

In June, EWC organized and hosted four webinars as well as one major conference via online platforms, gathering dedicated participants from across Europe.

The European Wergeland Centre Secretariat has now a new organizational structure in place.

EWC’s project “Democracy Workshops” will host its first workshops this fall after the government has decided to open up for activities aimed at children and youth in Norway.

Around 240 participants gathered for the online national conference “Schools for Democracy” in Ukraine June 24.

When Greek schools closed in early March because of the pandemic, 18 schools already participated in the piloting phase of the EWC project “Schools for All – Integration of Refugee Children in Greek Schools”. Despite being temporarily interrupted in their efforts, schools report on positive results.

Executive Director Ana Perona-Fjeldstad participated at a virtual UNESCO expert meeting on “Education as a Tool for Prevention: Addressing and Countering Hate Speech” May 13-14. 2020. At the meeting experts discussed recommendations ahead of the upcoming Global Education Ministers Conference and Multi-stakeholder Forum on addressing and countering hate speech through education.

With an aim to build a common understanding of the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values students’ needs in the 21st century, the OECD Future of Education and Skills 2030 hosted its first global forum in mid-May. As part of the multi-stakeholder focus group, EWC took part in the virtual workshop “overcoming challenges in curriculum delivery during school closures and transition back to school”.

When project activities were postponed due to the corona pandemic, the project team started to look into the possibility to move parts of the “Preparing Future Teachers in the Western Balkans” project online.

Together with Utøya, EWC is developing a new online learning platform within the framework of the “Democracy Workshops” Project.

EWC’s Schools for Democracy in Ukraine moved the training of 120 schools online due to the current outbreak of the corona virus. Work has also been intensified on a Massive Open Online Course on «How to build a democratic school», which will hopefully be launched in June.

In this interview Executive Director Ana Perona-Fjeldstad gives an update on how EWC has been handling the corona pandemic. She also talks about which challenges she sees today and in the time to come, as well as the importance of education for democratic citizenship and human rights education to ensure that this health crisis does not become a democracy crisis.

When faced with restrictions and rules of social distancing due to the outbreak of the Corona virus, partners and participants of the EWC project “Preparing Future Teachers in the Western Balkans” have come together to offer each other support and find alternative ways of continuing with the project implementation.