Kyrgyzstan, like many other FSU countries, experiences a challenging stage of its development: economic decline, lack of jobs in the regions, low wages, substandard living conditions, escalation of internal and external migration, etc. In this context, social tension in communities is getting deeper and more severe. People believe in their future less and less, and they have fewer hopes that someday it will become easier and happier. Certainly, one cannot state that the country takes no efforts to improve the situation, and all mass media report them. However, common people do not feel any improvements in their lives. In this situation, it is impossible to sit on one’s hands and observe the hopelessness, which can be seen in everything. As they speak, “people in trouble are left to themselves”, that is why training centers operating in Chui region of Kyrgyzstan started working with all their enthusiasm and skills as professionals in the area of adult education.
In November – December 2009, dvv international provided financial support to the event titled “Training Workshop on Adult Education” organized in the cities of Bishkek, Tokmok, Belovodsk and Karabalta. This event aimed to attract attention of institutions forming the economy in the regions to addressing the major problem that people were facing at that moment – lack of jobs, and not just jobs, but those which could enable people to maintain their families. Within the framework of this event, we tried not only to attract attention, but also to arouse everyone’s interest in getting involved in development of a mechanism that could make use of adult education to help common people become decent citizens of their country and do not worry about their future. The expression “traveling workshop” is self-explanatory. We formed a mobile group comprising representatives of government agencies, business entities and social sector. First, this group forms its own opinion and ideas and moving from region to region it discusses the problem with local participants of the event and thus it collects various visions of problem handling methods, generalizes the collected information and develops the overall action plan.
For example, in the above regions working meetings were organized at training centers where representatives of a number of small and medium enterprises as well as government agencies, who are not indifferent to common people’s lives in Kyrgyzstan, were invited. Overall, some 30 enterprises participated in the event including those combining a lot of commercial entities, i.e. entrepreneurs’ unions.
Discussions covered numerous issues such as the quality of training, links of training with labor market, certification of training, financing of training, categories of target groups, their personal data and attitude to labor as an essential component of training, modern occupations and an opportunity for flexible approach to training of future employees, risks of financial investment in training of a prospective employee, business development through education, the role of state in the tandem of training and business, and a number of other issues.
In the course of the event, the participants were given the information on international trends in adult education and specifically on the activities of the Institute for International Cooperation of the German Adult Education Association pertaining to lifelong learning promotion. This information was not only of interest to participants, but also contributed to understanding among the round tables participants, since information and examples of how people in developed countries think about improving common people’s lives through interaction among various organizations and achieve good results produced its psychological effect.
As a result of animated discussions, representatives of business environment understood that their business directly depends on every person’s purchasing power. And the purchasing power depends on availability or lack of a good job, and in its turn a good job is impossible without good and quality training. Moreover, the training should be life-long.
In addition to round tables, training centers organized various activities attracting local people’s attention to training centers themselves. Those activities were diverse, starting with organizations of master classes and ending with demonstration of training results of such courses as “Hairdresser”, “Seamstress”, “Cook”, etc. They all were organized to ensure visibility of educational activities carried out in Chui Regional Development and Training Center, Bishkek Development and Training Center, Karabalta Training and Development Center, and Belovod Adult Training Center.
Seemingly, the “Traveling Workshop on AE” will yield its results in the near future, as during the event various agreements on joint plans for educational activities were reached by the participants. Currently, the formed group is working on the strategy of cooperation with all interested regional organizations for several years to come.
Rima Toktobekova,
Program Manager
Kyrgyz Adult Education Association
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