The ISC Development Project provided the unique opportunity for workers' education organisations in different regions to exchange experiences and discuss common activities. In this article, Leonard Gentle who was responsible for co-ordinating the project internationally, evaluates the long-term organisational growth and development which the project inspired.

In most instances, the regional seminars of the ISC Development Project provided the first chance for IFWEA affiliates and fraternal organisations to share experiences and plan together in a concentrated way. The only region which had some recent experience of direct contact was Asia-Pacific where affiliates had participated in a regional ISC.

For many IFWEA affiliates, their membership of an international body has largely meant attending occasional international meetings or reading IFWEA publications. Through the regional seminars, and subsequent events, organisations were able to share in some depth their experience of workers’ education. By comparing similarities and differences, they laid the basis for a greater pooling of experience and resources in the future.

At the project's evaluation seminar in Manchester, the point was made that globalisation had contradictory trends which called on the labour movement to meet opposing challenges. On the one hand building international solidarity across countries and regions and, on the other, strengthening organisations locally, nationally and regionally. The regional seminars highlighted this tension by emphasising the need to connect ISC programmes with local peculiarities and to strengthen workers’ education organisations where they are located. Yet this is an essential part of building broader international collaboration. One of the ideas initially was to link the regional seminars by integrating the report from one region into the seminar which immediately followed. Each seminar would then consider the views and experiences of another region when planning. We were not always successful in getting this kind of "snowball effect". This approach could be attempted in the future.

A number of new affiliates joined IFWEA as a result of participating in the regional seminars and the promise of joint activity. The growth in IFWEA membership in Africa and the Caribbean is noteworthy. Particular mention though should be made of the increased membership in Latin America brought about by the affiliation of the Brazilian trade union federation, the CUT.

Two of the seminars - Africa and Latin America - also worked together with IFWEA’s partner SOLIDAR in discussing the issue of core labour standards in preparation for the WTO meeting in Seattle. These initiatives, together with the example set by the Asia-Pacific seminar, helped to strengthen IFWEA's regional relationships with the development NGO network as well as the regional structures of the International Trade Secretariats.

The Central and Eastern European seminar was significant at a number of levels. It brought together mostly trade unions from Hungary, Poland, the Baltic States, Romania, Albania, Croatia, Serbia and Macedonia. It was a concrete example of an activity which brought new affiliates into IFWEA but also strengthened Euro-WEA (the European regional body of IFWEA). The outcomes of the seminar will hopefully feed into plans for Euro-WEA in the future. Most importantly it was a rare opportunity for organisations of the labour movement in the region to meet across ethnic divisions and, in a very modest way, demonstrate the potential of the labour movement as a unifying democratic force. The meeting discussed the likely impact of the Stability Pact on the Balkans and proposed joint education programmes in the region.

The WEA (England and Scotland) seminar was different. It was mostly about bringing internationalism into the WEA’s current programmes at branch and district level. In this sense the seminar also helped make IFWEA and its international traditions alive for educators in Britain.

A common feature of all of the seminars was the creation of expectations that regional joint activity would become a reality. This had to be tempered by debates on capacity. Did organisations have the means to implement joint programmes alongside fulfilling responsibilities to local constituencies? Everyone agreed that rationalising activities and sharing resources would help individual workers’ education organisations, but until this actually happens rationalisation appears to be a daunting task. From the seminar in Africa, for instance, some of the organisations are so fragile and have so few resources that even implementing a plan designed to relieve their workload can prove too demanding.

This tension raised the question: Do regions first have to work together for a regional structure to emerge or should IFWEA set up a structure (with resources and personnel) which facilitates regional activity? Neither the regional seminars nor the evaluation seminar answered this question. For the potential of regional collaboration to be realised, this issue will have to be resolved sooner rather than later. At present Euro- WEA is the only regional structure of IFWEA with its own resources and programme of activities.

Another variant of the same question is the issue of regional co-ordination. Currently, there are Regional Co-ordinators on the IFWEA Executive Committee. The responsibilities of co-ordination have been felt differently - in Asia/Pacific the sheer scale of affiliates and the dispersed nature of the region has meant delegating responsibilities to sub-regional co-ordinators; whereas in Latin America the relatively small number of affiliates has not represented a co-ordination problem for our Peruvian colleagues (although this may change with the increase in affiliation in the region). Africa, the Caribbean and Central and Eastern Europe are somewhere between these two examples.

The perspective of IFWEA

There are a number of possible outcomes from the regional seminars which could benefit IFWEA and workers’ education enormously. Whether these possibilities will be realised cannot be determined by a seminar alone. They will have to be carried forward to the IFWEA General Conference in August, the IFWEA Executive, and future regional initiatives.

The seminars can be seen as part of a larger thrust towards moving IFWEA from an international structure in intent to a functioning international body in practice. Since its inception IFWEA has had a commitment to internationalism. Given its origins in North Western Europe and the distribution of material resources within the movement, this commitment could go little further. The decisions of the Belfast General Conference in 1996, including the restructuring of the Executive, the elections of Regional Co-ordinators and the establishment of the ISCs have gone a long way towards realising IFWEA’s vision of internationalism in practice. The ISC Development Project should be seen as part of this vision. It increased the membership of IFWEA in the developing countries and integrated affiliates more directly into IFWEA activities. At the project's evaluation seminar, participants remarked that already IFWEA feels less like a Western European structure in terms of its culture, concerns and future direction. There is some way to go, but major steps forward have been made.