“Educators for an Equitable Society”: Strengthening local iniatives of educators in Caucasus through international cooperation
Duration
2020 – 2021
Platform for Social Change – Educators for an Equitable Society
Civic Engagement, Education, Youth
Ongoing
Goals
The overall purpose of the project is to empower and connect educators in the Caucasus region and in Central Asia to become social activists, to enhance social innovation and contribute to a more equitable society.
The goals of the project are
- to develop and enhance the social engagement of educators as social activists in the Caucasus region and in Central Asia and to promote civic rights and social responsibility
- to overcome the isolation of individual initiatives and enable peer learning and exchange of innovative practices for civic engagement at the interface of education and community life within and between different countries
Starting Point
The current project builds upon previous efforts that were targeted towards tackling the problem of inequality in the educational sector of the Caucasian countries. The proposed project directly builds upon the outcome of the project “Platform for Social Change – Educators for an Equitable Society” (ACT II, 2018-19), that has empowered and connected educators in the Caucasus countries and in Central Asia to become social activists to enhance social innovation and contribute to a more equitable society. This experience has shown that educators are a resourceful group of community activists and initiators of civic engagement and that their international collaboration can give additional impulse and leverage to their local activities.
Participating Countries
Armenia, Azerbaidjan, Georgia, Russia, Tajikistan
Target Group
Active educators and their communities
Virtual “Platform for Social Change”
The project will use the virtual platform for social change developed in the course ACT II to reach the following objectives/outcomes:
- The potential of the internal communication platform as a means of communication between social activists working in different countries under challenging circumstances is further exploited;
- Community-based initiatives started during ACT II as well as personal contacts and networks that were developed between different stakeholders on local and regional level are consolidated
- Previously developed civic initiatives are continued and new initiatives are developed via the platform; active peer communication started during ACT II is strengthened
- Forces of two networks of civic activists and civic organizations (ACT II and Caucasus Network for Children) are united through introducing internal communication platform as a means for collaboration
- Peer learning, exchange of expertise and innovative practices for civic engagement at the interface of education and community life within and between the countries of the project regions is continued
- Skills of active educators in utilizing the platform/online tools for their community projects further developed through trainings in peer-groups
- Scope and impact of the network of civic activists that was created during ACT II enhanced through linking it to and using synergies with IZ’s “project development task force” (introducing new topics, e.g. social entrepreneurship, connecting with new activists, etc.) and other IZ initiatives
- Platform introduced as a collaboration tool for projects developed by the “project development task force” and expertise of educators/activists used to share their know-how on how to work with this tool
