CROATIAN EXPERIENCE IN TREASURY FOR ADULT EDUCATION

Udruženje obrtnika grada Zagreba (Association of Craftsmen Zagreb) is independent, professional and business organization of craftsmen, traders individuals and companies. Association initiates activities like vocational education and trainings for students (Law and legal regulations, Economy and Entrepreneurship, Safety at work, Working pedagogy, professional theoretical and practical classes for auto-professions, masseur, hairdressers, beautician etc.), organizes lectures and seminars for professional experts, preparations for masters exams, practices for students, participation and visits to craft fairs in the country and abroad. Special attention is focused on education of young craftsmen, along with close cooperation with vocational schools. Association represents the interests of about nine thousand of its members organized into 38 sections which are our Adult learners.

Through this project, we are trying to spread Croatian tradition, improve language, IT skills and cultural knowledge.

IT SKILLS

In the segment of IT skills, after the 1st Project meeting in Romania we got an idea about organizing trainings and practicum about IT skills and basic English language that our members can use in the future and our Learning module on the Project web page as well as to achieve more IT skills that are required for the labor market needs.  In cooperation with Craft College we organized trainings and practicum for our members and they have learned basic and advance IT skills. Our focus was on the fact that a lot of our members don't use the possibilities that modern technology offers them which can improve their business as well as to learn more about national traditions of other EU countries. Since some of our members who participated in our trainings and practicum never used computers and some of them barely use computers on daily base we was expecting some difficulties, but all of our members reacted very well and although some of them never worked on computers they seemed encouraged for the future use of computers.

Trainings and practicum were organized in small groups and for every person we prepared all the necessary equipment. During few weeks 50 of our members went through our trainings and practicum. During our trainings and practicum we improved IT skills of our members, harmonized their skills and education with the labor market needs and encouraged them for our future trainings and practicum. Also, because of the importance of the English language for better use of IT skills, during our training and practicum our members also learned English so that they could have no problem when using a computer system with English language (if the PC that they are using doesn’t have Croatian translation). They have also seen importance of English language when they searched for specific terms and by learning the basics of English language they gained the ability of learning about the national traditions of other EU members as well as future learning on our Learning platform on the project web page. Another group of learners was taken, and they had also managet to get knowledge mentioned above.

                          

TRADITION

In the segment of tradition, our plan was to use new technologies to improve the skill of making tradition based items (for example souvenirs ), using new technologies to improve the way our traditions are represented to others and to get to know traditions of other EU members.

Association of Craftsmen Zagreb made the fair that was organized under the name "Manufacturers souvenirs of Zagreb - Zagreb" which took place from 15th to 18th September 2014 in Zagreb main square- Ban Jelacic Square. 

The event was attended by various manufacturers, 17 of them, among which are found many interesting artifacts. Craftsmen on the fair where promoting tradition and traditional crafts by showing and teaching the entire process of making traditional items (souvenirs like “Licitarsko srce” and other traditional artifacts). In that few days, fair had several thousand visitors, due to a fact that was organised on a central square which has more 12 000 square meters. "Manufacturers souvenirs of Zagreb - Zagreb" was promoted through our Web page, TV production, radio and newspapers where people were invited to participate.

LANGUAGE

In the segment of language, in addition to the already mentioned development of basic and advanced English language skills within the conducted IT course we are also currently developing a short Croatian language course aimed at foreign learners. Even though it's not official we could use the IT development terminology and say that the Croatian language course is currently in it's „alpha stage“. We have the an idea of a direction in witch we would like to further develop the course. We would like to make the course more complex with addition of audio files pronounced by native Croatian speakers, learning path, tests and additional resources that are offered through the Thesaurus e-learning platform.

DISSEMINATION

Dissemination of our activities went through our newspaper, television and radio broadcasts (Radio Sljeme) and through the newspaper of Chamber of trades whitch continuously promotes the activities. 

Also, on web pages people can be informed about all kind of activities which are main subject of this project. On our blog on blogspot.com and google+ we were talking about tradition which includes few of the most famous Croatian souvenirs which are made by our craftsmen. Also, we had talked about other side of tradition for example gastronomy.

We are currently in a stage of planning another IT course which will be based on the use of social media (Facebook, Twitter etc.) due to a fact that a lot of activities are being held through those services and many of our members/learners aren't involved in those kind of  activities.

Zagreb, March 2015.