Building Prosperity in the Danube Region
Author: Ana Zlibut, Timisoara, Romania
The Working Group 3 was formed by members from Germany (Carmen Stadelhofer, Markus Marquard), Slovenia (Dusana Findeisen, Tamara Jare), Ukraina (Lesya Loyko, Oleh Luksha, Olha Yehorova, Alla Kozhyna), Bulgaria ( Mariela Nankova, Emiliya Velikova), Serbia (Marina Fodor) and Romania (Ana Zlibut).
After the presentations of the members, the chairperson, Carmen Stadelhofer put two questions: “What to expect from the group?” and “What can you bring to the group?”.
At the first question, the members of the Working Group 3 responded that they want to be involved in projects, to be informed and to find alliances along the Danube.
Regarding the second question, members said that they can bring ideas and knowledge, qualifications and trainings, experience in coalitions, involvement of many people in projects.
Because we are a mixture from Universities and NGOs, we can combine and take profit.
At political level, it is important to be foster the lifelong learning, because politicians never speak about elderly and intergenerational learning.
At structural level, we know very different starting points in Danube countries-for example, Third Age Universities aren`t everywhere.
Carmen Stadelhofer underlined that without learning, in a changing world, citizens can`t participate and, to be powerful, it`s important to make known to politicians and stakeholders that the people want to be involved and she gave us the example of The Wanted Danube Project, made by Danube- Networkers for Europe (DANET). Money and support is needed for qualification trainings, for multiplicators in the field of education for elderly and intergenerational learning; also, a defined sum of money is needed for small sized transnational projects without complicated applications.
We spoke about the new project, Tastes of Danube: Bread, Wine and Herbs, started by DANET, whose theme gives possibility to a lot of organizations and people to participate. The members of the Working Group 3 had different ideas for the project, which is linked to education, culture, tourism, linked to social entrepreneurship and formation. It is important to include in this work methods to overcome the language barriers and to foster less educated people to take part.
Ana Zlibut, first vice president The Writers` League Timisoara