IFWEA has experienced a considerable expansion in activity, and participation by its affiliates. This has dramatically raised expectations for the development of future IFWEA activity. Dave Spooner, International Programmes Officer of the WEA (England and Scotland), identifies several strands of future development that affiliates expect to develop.

Transnational education activity

The ISC programme has proved that IFWEA is capable of running good quality education programmes that are transnational – both in method and content.  

The challenge now is to further improve the educational quality of the experience, to broaden the number of affiliates participating, and to explore further transnational projects that need not necessarily depend on the ISC model.

More specifically, we need to concentrate on evaluation and follow-up. ISC participants are representative of a workplace, community or organisation. They are taking back new ideas and experiences into their ‘constituencies’. If successful, an ISC would thus reach not just 100-150 direct course participants, but several thousands of people. How can we demonstrate this? How can we ensure that the evaluation of transnational activity is not just limited to those participating directly, but provides a broader picture of the impact of the programme?

One hopes that ISCs provide a stimulus to learn more, to use the experience as the basis for further workers’ education programmes. How can IFWEA provide further educational “progression routes” for ISC participants? Can it provide support for national affiliates to develop education programmes that broaden and deepen the ISC experience? There are already isolated examples. How can we build on this?

Regional Development

IFWEA can now seriously contemplate the establishment of new regional organisations. This

will inevitably be an uneven process. The European regional organisation, Euro-WEA, is now relatively well established, with its own secretariat, Executive Committee, a modest budget, and a programme of activity. A major part of Euro-WEA’s current programme is dedicated to “sub-regional” activity in central & eastern Europe, where it is hoped to establish an IFWEA office in Sofia.

In Asia-Pacific, there is now considerable impetus behind the establishment of a formal regional structure. This also requires sub-regional development, particularly for South Asia.

Latin American regional activity is also relatively strong. With new affiliations in Canada and America, and the beginnings of activity in the Caribbean, there were serious discussions during the conference towards an Americas region as a whole.

IFWEA has a number of strong affiliates in South Africa, and affiliates in ten other countries, mostly in southern Africa. A significant development has been affiliations from African Portuguese-speaking countries, which – through linguistic commonality – is already forming the basis of sub-regional ISC activity.

The development of regional structures is a major undertaking. It requires several years of work, considerable resources, and the strong commitment of all affiliates.

Support for national development

Organisations join IFWEA with their own need for development, which can be assisted through learning from other countries, working in partnership, or simply generating new ideas within an international organisation.

In recent years, much of this demand has come from:

	Affiliated trade unions seeking to extend and adapt their programmes for their own members and representatives into broader community education provision;
	Affiliates wishing to develop new courses on globalisation;
	Affiliates seeking to discover new materials, methods and techniques to improve the quality and relevance of their curriculum;
	Affiliates needing to develop their own capacity and infrastructure, whether through improved management, a stronger democratic organisation, the use of information technologies, or their ability to design, manage, and evaluate educational projects.

Some affiliates may look to IFWEA as a possible source of financial support. IFWEA is not an international donor organisation; it has to raise finance for its own programmes, just like most of its member organisations. It does, however, have a legitimate function in supporting member organisations that wish to develop their own skills and capacity to raise funds.  

Fund-raising should not be targeted only towards affiliates from developing countries. Many workers’ education organisations in relatively rich countries are struggling to raise sufficient finance. There is constant demand, for example, from European members wanting support in raising and managing funds from the European Union.

This calls for IFWEA training programmes for the staff and representatives of its affiliates. Most of IFWEA’s training and staff development in recent years has been limited to ISC facilitators’ training, and a few one-off seminars (mostly in Europe).

IFWEA is also concerned with creating new workers’ education organisations, where none exist, or to defend those under attack.  In cases of state repression, IFWEA is expected to defend these organisations, even if through no more than internationally co-ordinated statements of support and solidarity.

Communications

IFWEA has four official languages: French, German, English and Spanish. In most respects however, the organisation is monolingual. Workers’ Education is only printed in English (although it is electronically published in Spanish). Executive Committee meetings are conducted in English. The international elements of ISCs are almost exclusively in English.

The organisation is fully aware of the problems this creates. It is an inescapable fact, that multi-lingual translation of documents and simultaneous interpretation in meetings are hugely expensive.

As the organisation grows, however, the lack of adequate translation and interpretation becomes very serious. Some affiliates have made available their in-house language skills. IFWEA nevertheless faces a major challenge in providing affiliates with the language services they need and deserve.

IFWEA’s Capacity

IFWEA’s own capacity and resources are very limited. IFWEA itself has only three members of staff and Euro-WEA’s secretariat has two staff members. Other regional co-ordinators have time donated by their member organisation. 

The core budget of IFWEA, derived from its affiliation fees, cannot sustain activities on a large scale, and is dependent on the commitment of some of its more wealthy affiliates, or on grant income from donor organisations.

The Executive Committee, meeting only once or twice a year, is responsible – between General Conferences - for strategic direction and policies. As the number and complexity of IFWEA practical activities grows, it becomes increasingly difficult for the Executive to be involved in the detailed design, planning, implementation and evaluation of project activities.

IFWEA faces a major challenge on how to meet the affiliates' expectations of expanded activity, while remaining organisationally sustainable and without placing impossible strains on staff and budgets.

There are a significant number of IFWEA affiliates with their own international programmes. Many of their activities are consistent with IFWEA’s objectives and priorities. Others may not have the capacity to run independent international programmes, but are interested in developing an international dimension to their own work.

As IFWEA’s membership, capabilities and coherence grow, an increasing number of these organisations recognise that in many circumstances we can do more to achieve our international policy objectives by working through IFWEA, than restricting ourselves to bilateral co-operation alone.

IFWEA Programme Team

At the General Conference, IFWEA adopted an important resolution designed to explore new ways of building the organisation’s capacity. The resolution calls for the Executive to consider setting up a IFWEA Programme Team, composed of staff members or activists from affiliates, who would be given the authority to implement activities on behalf of the Executive.

The proposal suggested that the team would be responsible for designing, fund-raising, implementation and evaluation of activities, reporting back to the Executive with concrete and practical advice on the implementation of policy decisions.

To take a hypothetical example, the Executive agrees that IFWEA should organise international seminars on the role of workers’ education in building organisations of informal sector workers. The Programme Team would consider where funds might be sought, who would organise the seminars, who might host the seminars etc. It would report back to the Executive with a concrete plan for implementation (or indeed, report that it is not feasible). If the plan is agreed, members of the team would then undertake specific tasks.

The membership of the Team, to be determined by the Executive, would consist of the IFWEA Project Officer along with experienced workers’ education organisers with the authority of their own organisations to undertake activity on IFWEA’s behalf. Some members might be able to contribute financially, some might be able to contribute their time and experience, others might bring expertise and other contributions from within their own organisations.

The overall objective is to create a vehicle whereby affiliates can contribute to IFWEA’s programme of activities in a coherent and co-ordinated way, and to build capacity without placing further financial burdens on IFWEA’s core budgets.  

This will take some time to establish, but already several organisations have indicated their willingness to contribute staff time and energy to such a team. If successful, it could provide a dramatic boost to IFWEA’s ability to promote and organise the international workers’ education movement.