Report from the chair in absentia

Welcome to the “old” EFTRE board! I’m very happy that so many of you made it possible to come also in times of crises. That encourages me - and I think also the other members of the exec- that we are on a good way with our work for EFTRE and that EFTRE has reached a certain level of importance in the world of Religious Education.

Today we have to make a number of decisions for the future of our organisation, some are small and some are far ranging. We thought over to update a bit the constitution of EFTRE, we have to start the discussion of the next EFTRE conference in 2013 (Nils offered his collaboration) and we have to elect board and exec members.

A short overview what we have worked on in the last 3 years

Much of the work was preparing the conference here in Brugge. What made it easier for us was that after working together now for 6 years we are a much more effective executive team, and we were able to learn from the last conference in Budapest – what was good, what failed - and from each other.

We were sorry that due to pressures of work Marianna from Hungary left the EFTRE executive this year and we have also to decide on her replacement, because Marianna was the voice of many Eastern countries. Lesley Prior from the UK joined the executive and Paul Hopkins has become the executive officer giving us a more formal and structured look.

Something we learned from the last conference was for example that we have to focus more on teachers, their needs, their support and the classroom, so we decided to enlarge the numbers of workshops here in Brugge.

Looking to develop the impact and work of EFTRE we started to organize mini seminars when and where we had our Executive or Board meetings, these have been a great success and have now taken place in Bruges, London and Helsinki. You can see more about these from the Front Page.

We are keen to develop this area of our work and want to put together training packets and material. In additional we plan to organize with your help also mini-seminars in countries where there are no executive members or where we can be invited by your institution or country to develop a training or professional development package. In service courses for teachers or summer schools are also ideas for the next years (NGO status!)

But we are also thinking of Sharing of Excellence in Teaching and Learning within the field of RS, RE, Diversity and Intercultural Education by projects via the website, the newsletter and the development of the newsletter into a wider organ (newsletter in a number of languages) and working with other groups (CoGREE etc…).

We would also like to organize teachers exchange and networking. The pre-work for that are developing contacts for the group, encouraging membership and links. Comenius could be a possible dissemination networking for EFTRE members. It needs partners in many countries for collaboration. We enlarged the EFTRE group in the last years and there are new members and those interested for example in Iceland, Malta and Cyprus.

But if we are interested in the theme - coming in the next weeks- we need to start this now, and make a time schedule, because the application will be for 2011, for 2 to 3 years. So the finishing dissemination could be the conference in 2013.

And last but not least: the RE Olympics. We want to encourage the board members to think if this is possibilities in their countries and to start on national level.

Maybe “intergeneration” could be a subject because it is one of the coming keywords of the EU. Becoming an NGO with representation at a wider European level could also help and should be an aim of EFTRE's work and seeking funding for a wider European project. But to organizing projects, an NGO status is often linked with money. So we have to look for more members paying because we need a financial basis for this. So we encourage your organisation to pay the contribution to EFTRE's work. We ask again a minimum contribution of €100,00 - thought we also want to support countries where this is a problem in the East of Europe and in new member countries and EFTRE has supported people to come to the conference.

So, welcome to the conference and we hope you have a wonderful time and are inspired to take the work back to your own countries and support the work of EFTRE.

Sonja Danner - Chair EFTRE
Paul Hopkins - Executive Officer EFTRE.