MenCare for active paternal engagement in child care - Newsflesh from Bulgaria

About an year ago a consortium of 10 Bulgarian NGOs - our Bulgarian member, Roditeli being one of them - launched a MenCare campaign in support of active male engagement in child care. For the very first time a national fatherhood campaign is organized in Bulgaria. After a year of intensive work and discovering the uncovered path, the project team was pleasantly surprised by the first positive results. "To be a Dad" has developed into one of the strongest viral campaign (without any budget for advertising) for the last 10 years in Bulgaria. The work team was awarded with the prestigious award for the Bulgarian non-governmental sector "Project of the Year - 2014", followed with the special prize "Father of the Year Award - 2015". For a period of year and a half more than 100 organizations are involved as supporters of the campaign. What are the reasons for this success? How the campaign was able to reach so many families and touch emotionally Bulgarian men? What is the secret? Get ideas in support for your MenCare campaigns by reading the attached articles (they give insights about our approach for social change and explain our path to the success).

Policy debate on intergenerational learning - report on the EUCIS-LLL event 31 March 2015

Population ageing will continue with accelerating pace in the next decades. Today half of the population is 40 years old or above while in 2060 half of the population will be aged 48 years or above. These trends require some considerable societal adaptations regarding work, family life and social protection. Many European practices, as well as research, show that intergenerational learning can be a strong boost for improving learning take up and attainment as well as a sense of solidarity. It is about learning together and learning from each other, and therefore it is an effective way to address a number of issues such as building active communities, promoting citizenship and addressing inequality. For instance, family learning should be integrated in educational institutions’ strategies to raise young learners’ attainment and to narrow the gap between the lowest and highest achievers. The potential in Europe is huge - being active, healthy and participative well into old age is a realistic prospect for a very large number of citizens. Yet, at the same time, only a small minority of people spend their retirement years on active engagement in continuous labour market participation and community life through voluntary activities and active leisure. This debate was aiming at sharing practices and views on how and why the intergenerational dimension should be mainstreamed in lifelong learning strategies. Participants discussed important related issues, such as how to understand intergenerational solidarity, how to promote active ageing and how to better share good practices. MEP Heinz Becker was hosting the event highlighting the importance of the topic.

Detailed and very colourful report of the event can be read here

School leadership in Europe - Toolkit published as the final outcome of a 4-year project

As the readers of our blog surely know EPA was part of a European network of over 30 partners working on policy recommendations and tools about school leadership for equity and learning, EPNoSL. On 28/29 May 2015 a so-called Peer Learning Activity (PLA) was held in Heraklion, Crete, Greece as the closing event of this project-like network. For EPA the most important outcome of the project is the Toolkit for Equity and Learning that has a separate chapter on stakeholder collaboration.

Parenting skills - the importance of training and validation

EPA was invited to take part at the Policy Debate on Intergenerational Learning on 30 March in Brussels. There, as usual, we emphasised the important role parents and grandparents play in the education of children and also the vast amount of learning they do while parenting. Andrew McCoshan from the ePlatform for Adult Learning in Europe became interested in the topic and as a result he published an article about EPA on this website of the European Commission: Why we need more quality learning opportunities for parents

Digitalisation programme for schools - newsflash from Croatia

The CEDEFOP website reported on a massive digitalisation programme of Croatian schools that will include the introduction of e-class registers (a well-established practice still a controversial one froma a parental point of view in many countries), a national distance learning portal and School 2.0, a 21st century way of schooling. Korak po Korak, the Croatian member of EPA has collected the opinion of some parents on the e-class register (e-class book) they already have experience with. The following reviews do not tackle the educational and trust issues arising from the introduction of this kind of feedback leaving out the child-parent bond yet, an issue in other countries.

Conference report on the Prague EPA Conference

On 24th and 25th April Prague hosted an EPA Conference on Supporting Parents to become the Best Primary Educators. EPA members were enjoying the possibility to explore the capital of the Czech Republic, a white spot on the map of EPA until now, but we also had an opportunity to learn about local and international initiatives aiming at supporting parents in their parenting roles. We were really honoured that the conference was attended and greeted by the Chairman of the Czech Parliamentary Committee on Education, Culture, Youth and Sports, the local mayor, high-ranking officials from the Ministry of Education and Municipality of Prague.

#DeliverNow - on Mother's Day for the EU Maternity Leave Directive

Half of Europe celebrates Mother’s Day today, 3 May, the other half will do so on 10 May. This occasion gives us a good opportunity to highlight the fact that the European Commission seems to be determined to withdraw the EU Maternity Leave Directive. It was adopted by the European Parliament in first reading in 2010, but the European Council is reluctant to put it on their agenda ever since quoting its being untimely because of the economic crisis. It proposes a minimum of 20 weeks of fully paid maternity leave (as compared to the present 14 weeks), the protection of pregnant women’s jobs and also a minimum of 2 weeks paid paternity leave. The European Women’s Lobby has been doing an extensive campaign to save the initiative.