A Steering Committee meeting of the project “Strengthening democratic citizenship education in Albania” took place in Tirana on 24 November 2022 and brought together the project’s beneficiary, donor and key stakeholders that include Ministry of Education and Sports, Quality Assurance Agency for Pre-University Education, People’s Advocate, Anti-discrimination commissioner and Student Parliament.
In their address to the members of the Steering Committee, Jutta Gutzkow, Head of CoE office in Tirana, highlighted the unique character and exemplary co-operation of all stakeholders of this project that has already made an impact. Villano Qiriazi, Head of the CoE Education Department, highlighted that the projects echoes the main pillars of the new strategy in the area of education and other work of the inter-governmental committee on education (CD-EDU) and that it may even be cited as an example of best practice to member states. The Ministry of Education and Sports expressed their entire satisfaction with the project action and emphasized the importance of continuing the project’s next phase, after completion of the current phase in November 2023.
According to the beneficiary and stakeholders, continuation is essential to secure the sustainability of the results already achieved and to support new priorities, such as digitalisation, participatory school budgeting, democratic labs at schools and strengthening the culture of democracy in Albania through education and implementation of the whole school model and RFCDC.
The Swedish experience on democratic citizenship education and its incorporation into the educational processes was presented by the Swedish experts with a view to streamlining future project activities.
The representatives of the Swedish Embassy in Tirana, Sida being the project’s donor, also noted the project’s relevance and flexibility and its ability to accommodate the beneficiary’s need and to trigger changes. The importance of sustainability of results was highlighted. The project team reported on the results achieved and presented an outline for future activities for the last year of the project implementation.
In the course of the debate, the Steering Committee re-confirmed the importance of a long-term perspective for stronger impact and outreach and expressed their hope that funding opportunities would be found in order to support the next phase of the project.
