A representative of the NGO Mladiinfo Montenegro participated in the online conference “The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the future development of the adult education system – key challenges”, held as part of the international conference of the EPALE project on October 7. On this panel the speakers were representatives of the adult education system, the Chamber of Commerce, representatives of tourism as one of the most affected branches of Montenegro in the corona virus pandemic, as well as representatives of the Employment Bureau and guests from the National Support Services of Croatia and Serbia who shared their experiences and predictions in this area with participants.
The aim of this major EPALE stakeholder conference is to strengthen cooperation and knowledge sharing between adult learning participants, connecting experts, trainers, training providers and policy makers to help shape the future of adult learning in Europe in the uncertain years to come.
“Adult education has undergone sudden changes and interruptions in its functioning during the Covid-19 pandemic”, said Dragan Marovic, assistant director in the Sector for active employment policy measures, at the panel. Pointing out the importance of adult training, including various trainings and learning at work, Marovic said that the programs of the Employment Agency of Montenegro have been recognized as a necessary tool that can contribute to increasing employment and encouraging competitiveness.
“As a central institution on the labor market, the Employment Bureau implements numerous programs, suitable for different target groups and strives to harmonize the supply-demand relationship as much as possible. Unemployed persons, especially those who are in the most unfavorable situation during employment, acquire the professional skills needed to perform jobs within the profession: computer and entrepreneurial skills, foreign languages and the like.”
Some of the conclusions of the conference are that due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the concept of lifelong learning has begun to gain importance, that additional efforts are needed to network different departments and strengthen cross-sectoral cooperation, create flexible programs to strengthen key competencies of citizens with special emphasis on digital competencies, in order to move to the digital business model in many sectors and thus try to stop the trend of job losses. Adult education must become an important part of the education policy of any country that seeks to preserve human capital and use it as a means of overcoming the crisis in the field of tourism and in other areas.