Active Nordic-Baltic Cooperation in the Euroguidance network

The Euroguidance network consists of a variety of Euroguidance centres in 32 countries. The interaction and cooperation between all these centres have taken many different forms over the years. Subdividing the network into smaller units has made it more workable from time to time. There are, for example, common theme-based working groups, where countries work together in smaller settings to develop different aspects of the network.  Other examples are the regional sub-networks such as the Nordic-Baltic part of the Euroguidance network.

The Nordic-Baltic sub-network cooperates actively amongst its members and the associated Euroguidance centres have organised many different activities in the past few years. One basic activity is the annual meeting. Colleagues from the 8 centres meet once every year to discuss their practical work. This annual Nordic-Baltic meeting gives useful input and ideas for the work in the individual centres. Here the centres learn about each others education and guidance systems and discuss strengths and weaknesses as well as recent developments in the area of guidance. The overall aim of this information exchange is to improve the services for the guidance community in each country. The centres also discuss the position of Euroguidance in each country and try to share good practices and tools as well as find areas of common interest for further cooperation.

International dimension in guidance training

From these discussions the centres discovered a general need to develop the career guidance training in all Nordic and Baltic countries. To meet this challenge the Euroguidance colleagues from Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden planned and organised a joint seminar for the trainers of guidance counsellors in 2006. Euroguidance Lithuania hosted the seminar, where 2-3 trainers from each of the countries where invited to discuss how to develop the international dimension in guidance counsellor training. The trainers also formed a working group to look further into the matter and to apply for funding. At the seminar, interest was expressed in offering international exchanges for the students in order to further their learning. For the Euroguidance centres, the seminar provided a possibility to put the European dimension in guidance on the agenda at the training institutions.

Cooperation between Euroguidance, Eures and Europass

Another recent event took place in Latvia, where the EURES and Euroguidance offices of Finland, Iceland and Latvia organized the first event for European mobility networks in the Nordic and Baltic countries. The event was aimed at the staff of offices representing the EU mobility networks Euroguidance, Europass and EURES. The objective was to take stock of the existing cooperation among the EU mobility networks on the national level, identify what barriers exist for mobility of workers and learners, and discuss how to overcome them through network cooperation. In addition, as 2008 is the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue, the participants where given an opportunity to look at what an intercultural dialogue is, how it is related to mobility and how to support it.

Visit to Cedefop

The annual Nordic Baltic meeting of 2008 took place in Greece. The reason for this was the wish to combine the meeting with a study visit to Cedefop, to learn more about their guidance project. Two important guidance related reports will be published by Cedefop in the near future; a study on guidance services to employed adults and a study on the qualifications of guidance practitioners, covering the provision of initial and in-service training, the accreditation of guidance practitioners and the qualifications required, including developing competence-based frameworks across Member States.

Possibilities for cooperation between Euroguidance and Cedefop were also discussed and the conclusion was that potential cooperation could involve dissemination of reports and policy initiatives at national level by the Euroguidance centres. As Euroguidance centres also have direct contact with the guidance community in each country, the centres might also be used to answer surveys as well as verify answers to different surveys distributed to various national actors.

These are some examples of the joint activities of the Nordic and Baltic Euroguidance centres. As most of the centres are quite small it is very valuable to be able to cooperate in this way and there are many plans for the future. Together the centres can organise events and collect and exchange information that no single centre could do individually.

Nina Ahlroos
Euroguidance Sweden