Short bio

Ten years ago, I started providing non-formal education in the field of culture. My work within the Institute Burja focuses on members of various vulnerable groups, especially immigrants from the nations of the former Yugoslavia living in Slovenia. I enjoy peace, tolerance, cultural content and intercultural dialogue. The implementation of our educational activities fulfils all of this.

My EPALE

I became familiar with EPALE four years ago. At first, I preferred to read the articles and experiences of other educators. Eventually, I found the courage to start posting too. Today, I am one of the ambassadors of the EPALE platform in Slovenia, and I use it for multiple purposes. I use online courses and find several useful learning materials that I can use in different educational contexts. There are also many examples of good practices. Further, I use it to find in-depth contributions on numerous topics, reporting from events or reflections on current issues.

My Story

Motivation is the key to good social inclusion

Motivating and involving minority members in non-formal education programs are the topics through which I actively evaluate the results of our work. The great response of the target group gives the organiser of the educational program recognition for the successfully performed work. The size of the ideal group of participants and the methodology of conducting educational workshops are always topics for discussion. Each of us wants to have more homogeneous groups and a more balanced profile of participants. The fact is, however, that this happens more rarely in practice.

There are some topics that our target audience will always be happy to embrace. However, other important issues are essential for preserving the cultural tradition, developing the target group and reducing the differences between the majority and minority society. These are issues related to specific organisational skills, project and cultural management, and various digital content. We strengthen the knowledge and skills that are extremely important for successfully integrating minority target groups into the majority society.

Our Institute Burja deals with educating immigrants, the people of the former Yugoslavia, who live in the Republic of Slovenia for various historical, cultural, political or economic reasons. This group of numerous immigrants in Slovenia is less organised, educated and less proportionally represented in the majority society.

They are organised amateurishly and voluntarily into various civil societies, but their organisational limits and rigid approaches are sometimes the biggest obstacles to their development. The older generations find it difficult to leave the management to the younger ones. There is a sizeable intergenerational gap between the first and second generations of immigrants. There is also a big gap between their traditional and modern cultural tradition.

In the light of this, we perform various analyses for better preparation of their needs in education programs. Based on these, we create a strategy for designing such curricula, with which our participants can more easily identify. In fact, the focus on their linguistic and cultural specificities helped us to develop effective educational programs. These stem from their actual desires and linguistic and cultural specificities (performing arts or minority culture) and other needs (acquiring additional organisational, leadership or digital skills). We also carry out a set of culturally neutral themes, with which we successfully address the intergenerational gap and connect traditional and modern culture (design and fine arts).

In our work, we use both a classical and a participant-oriented approach. We use various flexible approaches and creative and innovative content to motivate our participants. We also involve renowned artists and experts in our teaching, with whom our participants can more easily identify. We choose the dates, location and length of specific workshops very carefully.

To illustrate this further, we should also add that most of our participants are not exactly enthusiastic about the many afternoon adult education activities. With all the systemic and carefully planned approaches, these often coincide with their private activities. As a result, we take advantage of all the synergies and partnerships of various stakeholders in the local environment (municipalities, civil society organisations, various experts).

In the context of supporting our educational activities, we especially welcome the significant change in the new Erasmus+ program, which concerns the mobility of adult education. Now learning adults can also go abroad for educational activities. This change will be very welcome in the future, especially in successfully tackling the consequences of various Covid restrictions and the additional social stratification associated with it.

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