EDTWIN — FOUR PARTNERS ONE GOAL: FIT FOR CENTROPE

EdTWIN comprises three bilateral projects funded by the European Fund for Regional Development ETC-Programmes.

EdTWIN-Partners:
• European Office of the Vienna Board of Education (Lead Partner, Vienna)
• Středisko služeb školám (Project Partner, Brno)
• Bratislavský samosprávny kraj (Project Partner, Bratislava)
• Nyugat-magyarországi Egyetem (Project Partner, Győr).

In a three-step approach, students and educators from Vienna, Southern Moravia, the region of Bratislava and the Hungarian Comitat Győr/Moson/Sopron are provided with a wide range of opportunities to acquire the competences needed for successful cross-border co-operation.

1. Getting to know the neighbour’s language and culture
2. Establishing personal contacts
3. Carrying out joint target-oriented activities.

EdTWIN — Connecting people creates sustainability
Schooling, vocation and language are the main areas of EdTWIN project activities.

• Students and educators are very much involved in projects focusing on personal encounters.
• Essential tools for successful cross-border co-operation are the partners’ languages. Therefore, EdTWIN offers opportunities for students and educators to acquire basic skills in neighbouring languages. To implement the set goals, training and communication centres have been set up in the four regions.
• Based on the CENTROPE key-message ‘Growing together — together we grow’, vocational education plays an important role. EdTWIN promotes and supports cross-border exchanges of experience. Future citizens of the CENTROPE region therefore will acquire the competences needed for joint successful regional development.

ET-struct
No one could have foreseen the 2008 financial and economic crisis when the EU formulated its Lisbon and Gothenburg goals in 2000 and 2001. This would change many of these ambitious transnational goals causing widespread uncertainty especially in the daily lives of European citizens who see their jobs, lives and security under threat.
As new ambitious transnational goals are being formulated and presented (eg, EU 2020, (http://ec.europa.eu/eu2020/index_en.htm)), who can predict what will happen in the future?
One thing is certain, regional economies must be in a position to cope with the pressures. They must react to and predict changing conditions, and they must be able to educate, train and retrain their workforces to meet the challenges.

The Central Europe project ET-struct aims at supporting regional stability and growth. How?

• ET-struct will bring together three of the major players that influence regions in permanent management structures: regional politics; regional economy; and regional education-training
• ET-struct will compile a dynamic inventory of skills and competences needed for Central Europe (‘new skills for new jobs’)
• ET-struct will develop and pilot on-site and online learning systems to educate, train and retrain regional workforces.

ET-struct will run until the end of 2012. The project, with the European Office, Vienna Board of Education as lead partner and 16 partner institutions in the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Poland, Slovenia, and the Ukraine, plans to improve the future working prospects of regional workforces.