Open Society Institute -
Macedonia during 1998, 1999 and 2000 supported this initiative.
The idea of founding this association was to encircle the whole
set of activities that were already done and to put this
initiative into legal frame, in order to empower youth and
teachers to fundraise and to work on global citizenship.
IEARN Macedonia, have President
of the Association (Programme Co-ordinator for Macedonia ),
Board of the Association (7 members including youth), Assembly
of the Association. In each city/town where iEARN Macedonia has
members, there are responsible educators and students for the
city/town, and for separate iEARN Macedonia member institutions
there are again responsible educator and student. There are
iEARN Macedonia members responsible for development, newsflash,
programmatic support, training, and youth.
iEARN Macedonia have 2 mailing
list services. One is for teachers, educators, and adults -
iearn_mak@freemail.org.mk
, and the other one is for youth-
iearn_mak_mladi@freemail.org.mk
. These services are used for faster and more efficient
communication and discussion among iEARN Macedonia members, and
project work.
The vision of iEARN Macedonia
association is to empower and prepare youth for successful life
in dynamic contemporary society via their involvement in project
based learning and teamwork by the use of ICT in regular
communication with the remote and local peers. Acting this way
youth is open to intercultural learning and awareness rising.
Emerging young leaders are identified, motivated and encouraged
to gain, acquaint, and learn in the spirit of cosmopolitism.
First aspect is to promote youth
as a "driving wheel" of the progress, the biggest treasure of
the community and the biggest challenge for the society.
Second aspect is to empower
youth, so youth can take and make meaningful difference in their
lives, community, and internationally for the benefit of the
mankind. They can think locally, but they are acting globally.
They should be and are ambassadors and in the same time
construction workers that are building bridges across digital
divide.
Predominantly, activities are
student based and student centred, structured on-line
collaborative projects/activities. Projects are proposed by
students and teachers jointly and are put together in one
booklet – Project Description Booklet. Students are working on
their contributions and submit them to the forums, or directly
to the co-ordinating person. Projects can be national, regional,
and international. Also project can be divided into action
taking, community service, environmental, scientific, civic
education, artistic, interdisciplinary, etc.
There are a lot of gatherings
(again national, regional, and international once) when students
and teachers are meeting each other in person. There are a lot
of camps, youth summits, and conferences where Macedonian
students and teachers were presenting their achievements. They
might know each other for a long time but on-line, not in
person. That is the biggest reward for hard working youth.
We are engaging a lot of energy
in establishing good collaboration with the governmental
institutions. At this point we are starting to cooperate with
the Presidential Cabinet; we are negotiating our cooperation
with the Ministry of Environment; we had established some
cooperation and have approval from the Bureau for Education
Development of Macedonia.
We have strong links with the
rest of the global iEARN network. We are exchanging ideas,
comments, suggestion, contributions on a daily basis, we are
sharing the same attitudes towards our life and future, we are
sharing the same technology, the same iEARN publications and the
same forums/newsgroups.
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