The annual Education International Development Cooperation meeting is a key tool to gather education unions to exchange information, experiences and ideas to build up the capacity of their members.
The 2019 annual Development Cooperation (DC) meeting, for which some 38 organisations from all over the globe have already registered, will bring together representatives of Education International (EI) member organisations in Brussels, Belgium, from 14-16 January.
“EI fully supports programmes to strengthen the teachers’ trade union movement and notes that long-term, structured cooperation is the basis for meeting the needs of teachers’ organisations in developed and developing countries,” reiterated EI General Secretary David Edwards.
“In 2019, as is the case since its inception, EI will go on acting first and foremost as a facilitator in this process of cooperation, and systematically collect and disseminate information, promote discussions on the quality of cooperation, and safeguard the principles agreed upon,” Edwards also insisted.
Based on responses from 70 education unions to a survey carried-out by the EI Solidarity and Development Unit, the conversations and discussions during the meeting will address the strengthening of the programmes in order to meet the organisations’ needs and follow-up on EI policies that will be debated and adopted at the World Congress in July 2019.
Edwards also expressed his confidence that the draft guidebook ‘A DC project from A to Z’ mapping out the basic principles serving as guidelines for cooperation within EI, which will be presented at the meeting, will be an efficient basis for trade union DC work.
More information about the programme of the DC meeting can be found on the DC 2019 website. A significant portion of the meeting will be devoted to side meetings.