Education

Through our DokuLab department, we are already organizing numbers of training initiatives for high school teachers and university students. Due to lack of funding our projects are usually adopted to donor’s intervention areas, which often limits or interrupts our interventions, and affecting our relations with schools and universities. Through this short-term intervention DokuFest would primarily accredit the teacher training modules at Ministry of Education & Science and The Kosovo Accreditation Agency and would align them with Sweden's strategy and priorities in Kosovo specifically, and in Western Balkans generally. Initially these areas would include and would not be limited to democratic governance and human rights, gender equality and non-discrimination, climate change and media literacy. 

These thematic areas will be revisited annually through consultative process with the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency in Kosovo and will be updated as needed. Through this program we will develop a comprehensive training program and curricula for high school teachers and university students. The current online resources for teachers are very vague as the staff capacities are limited to implement the program and continuously update the online resources. We will initially create a three-year competitive internship and skill building programs for 4th year students of Technical High School from Prizren as a part of the digital skill building programs for youth within our DokuLab department, who will be guided by project team members to design and update the online resources for teachers and work with professional teams in creating the online resources for students. Each year we will be providing 3-month internship and skill building opportunities for at least 8 students each year. As there is a high demand on labor market for these particular skills, through the internship and skill building the students will have expanded opportunities to work and study. DokuLab is designed as a strong multidimensional project management program, and currently manages and runs the Educational Film Centre for storytelling on a national and regional level. 

To upgrade this basic training to intermediary, DokuFest will seek recommendations from Swedish Film Institute to identify partners in Sweden to support our Educational Film Centre with methodology and know-how in exploring traditional and nontraditional forms of nonfiction storytelling through collaborative opportunities for filmmakers, journalists, scholars, policy makers and students. The work of DokuLab is similar to the work of Film Resource Centres in Sweden that are financed through Swedish Film Institute (SFI). All the Regional Film Resource Centres in Sweden increase opportunities for children and young people to experience and create with moving pictures, both at school and in their spare time. At school this relates to initiatives for school cinema screenings, and offering knowledge development for teachers. 

This is exactly the strategic direction of the DokuLab department. These networks would greatly contribute in building sustainable partnerships with Swedish counterparts to develop training programs for youth capacity building in nonfiction storytelling, that could potentially expand and include participants from other Western Balkan countries, thus contributing to intercultural exchange and cohesion in addressing the priorities of Sweden's results strategy in the Western Balkans. The synergies between the artistic direction and education will further our response to the challenges of contemporary society, such as, erosion of democratic institutions and lack of dialogue and inclusion, by merging arts and culture with wider relevant social issues and by employing innovative, inclusive, emancipatory and democratic models of organization, program collaboration and governance accessible to all segments of society.