Ei-iE

Educators and Scientists Free Trade Union of Georgia (ESFTUG) - The Georgian Teachers 'Union - and the Teachers' Association of the Upper Secondary School in Denmark have established a collaborative project for civil society capacity building in Georgia. The focus of the project is to promote democratic school development and education-based capacity building - including social inclusion especially in relation to minorities and regional differences - both in the Georgian teachers' association and among Georgian teachers. The goal is to inspire Georgian upper secondary school teachers and the Georgian teachers' association to work with school development locally and nationally. In doing so, the teachers' association is strengthened both 'upside down' and 'from the bottom' as well as its capacity to exercise advocacy for its members in education policy issues in the long term. School development and advocacy is an integral part of respectively Danish teachers and GLs work for many years, but is new to the work of the Georgian organization. The project deals with concrete policy initiatives in which Danish teachers in 4 workshops with 40 people at a time - both teachers and local organization representatives - inspire and discuss the four themes chosen by the Georgian teachers' association: 1) school democracy, 2) evaluation and feedback culture , 3) use of IT in teaching and 4) as well as student-centered teaching. In addition, capacity building and visits to Denmark are carried out by representatives of the Georgian teachers' association. Both of them will help to establish and develop the basis for future advocacy. Fist phase expire 31. December 2019 but we expect to get funds to continue the work in 2019-20.

Educational policy capacity building both to strengthen teacher engagement in local school development and nationaly to support the established the social sectoral dialogue between ESFTUG and the Ministry of Education.

Inspiration seminars on educational policy themes where Danish experienced teachers facilitate a debate among the Georgian participants on how to advocate teachers voice on the selected themes.

The project has started at the same time as ESFTUG and the Ministry of Education signed an agreement on social sector dialogue. The project has helped ESFTUG to engage its members in educational policy discussions locally and nationally and has helped ESFTUG with a stronger mandate in its negotiation with the ministry. A substantial number of the participating teacers are working on implementing school development activities locally based on the seminar inspiration.