Ladies and gentleman,

A   Chinese proverb ( Guanzi 645BC) says:

“When planning for a year, plant corn.
When planning for a decade, plant trees.
When planning for life, train and educate people."

In Serbia we have a proverb: “One learns as long as one lives”, that we mostly use when committing an error and seeking some good in it. Gurus of 21. Century concepts of Lifelong Learning (LLL) say that    LLL is the concept in which “It's never too soon or too late for learning". Lifelong learning sees citizens provided with learning opportunities at all ages and in numerous contexts: at work, at home and through leisure activities, not just through formal channels. LLL is a form of pedagogy that encompasses balanced objectives of learning like:  development of people’s employability and adaptability in order to enable them to enter and progress within the labor market, creation of active citizenship and improvement of social inclusion.  At the same time, LLL has an important role to play in helping people realize their personal ambitions and pursue their own interests. Such aims are summarized under the objective of personal fulfillment. Although I have some concerns whether numerous TV programs and computer games sloe purpose is educational, as my kids try to present to me. So, what’s new?

Circumstances. Or more precisely, the fact that circumstances have globalized, that the world became “smaller”. Globalization, main feature of new circumstances of our lives, can simply be defined as an increasing inter-dependence among societies, which are still extremely different. The danger of polarization is that, as the world is integrated in one way by globalization, it is increasingly divided in another way into still inferior majority of states and privileged minority that enjoy a self reinforcing superiority of wealth, technology and power. The growth of global wealth brings some certainty to the undeveloped, but with high side-by effects costs, we must take into account and prepare to tackle them. These costs are sometimes the loss of norms, value systems, rules, expectations, and lifestyles. Even in the developed countries, changes in society’s structures were not so dramatic until the third of the twentieth century. It was only then, that the traditional model by which people conduct their lives has been seriously challenged for the first time. These

Changes haven’t really started in the majority of humanity in most of the world.  Foundations of our society have been severely shaken by the economic, social, and Cultural Revolution of the later part of the twentieth century. A great many of the solutions and structures that we had in the past have been destroyed by the extraordinary dynamism of the economy in which we live. This is throwing an increasing number of men and women into a situation in which they cannot appeal to clear norms, perspectives, and common values, in which they do not know what to do with their own individual and collective existence. This is true of institutions such as the Family, but also of political institutions that were the foundation of the civilization - the public sphere. Politics, parties, newspapers, organizations, representative assemblies, and states, none of these operates in the way they used to and in which we supposed they would go on operating for a long time to come. On top of all that people of 21 ct have to accept that the entire world is affected by diminishing resources, growing environmental problems and increasing inequality of opportunity, and that all states are therefore required to work towards sustainable development which does not imperil the future.  How we tackle all of this?

Globalization asks for a global orientation as part of lifelong learning. LLL should provide an encompassing strategy to learn and adapt to accelerated development. Development is about welfare. Welfare is about quality of life. Quality of life is about functionality in the society you live in. And functionality is about the ability to cope with life, to read and write and to cope with questions like health and consumerism; to be able to learn and live with other cultures, and it is about equal access to learning and learning on your own conditions.  The One World idea asks us to see economic and ecological inputs and outputs at the same time. Climate, water, energy - whatever one does to them at one place or point in time, it has its implications for others. Sustainable development is called for respecting constant interdependency. This is not different for terms and realities of social responsibility and international solidarity. Not to take care or not to be involved is not being neutral. 

From the aspect of securing democracy and respect of HR one of the main    challenges of the globalized word is to establish an understanding of justice which by embracing recognition (voice-citizenship) and redistribution (resources) creates an inclusive society -a just, inclusive democracy. Such a society will enable its citizens to develop the capabilities to acquire resources and to express themselves in the public sphere. There is the need for a realization of basic education for all as an achievement in itself as well as a prerequisite for many other options and requirements for active participation in democracy and work. In this age of globalization and the creation of knowledge based information societies, towards which the EU and SEE are striving, there should be no limit to learning.    The creation of ever growing learning opportunities poses a challenge for every responsible person, professionals and their organizations, and politicians alike.  LLL promote   the development of knowledge and competences that will enable each citizen to adapt to the knowledge-based society and actively participate in all spheres of social and economic life, taking more control of his or her future, becoming an active citizen in an inclusive society. An inclusive citizenship requires ‘recognition’ of different voices as well as fair distribution of resources which provide the condition for equal participation.

Let’s narrow the focus of LLL potentials to the region of SEE, where most of the societies are torn by the demands of the political and economic transition to democracy and free market economy. Some of them still have to cope with a huge burden of recent bloody armed conflicts and authoritarian past, while new global challenges mentioned earlier are piling. Being painful as it is transition to democracy and free market economy causes increased trend of social exclusion of”transitional losers”. Faced with opening of their societies, harsh competition and the fact that the world was not static while they lived in more isolated communities, many people of the WB, temporarily or for a longer period of time loss access to the most important life chances that a modern society offers’ through becoming disconnected from jobs, education, homes, leisure, civic organizations and even voting.

One of the main challenges for the SEE, but particularly for the countries of the WB is to develop the capabilities for citizens to become active participants in remaking the communities in which they live and work.    These communities still contain poverty and deprivation gaps. Poverty undermines citizen’s self-esteem, expectations, status and power which together erode their sense of well-being and capacity to participate together as members of society. Poverty and depravation are thus best interpreted as twin processes which deny the material, social and political rights of citizens. Social exclusion that tickles as a time bomb, no matter region’s successful transition from stabilization to integration into euro-Atlantic structures, is what may easily affect security of democracy and protection of HR. 

While much public policy of EU, CoE and SP focuses upon the skills young people, which they will need to enter and survive in the labor market less emphasis is accorded to the significance of encouraging them to find the voice and practices of cooperative agency indispensable to flourishing within a democratic civil society.    Concepts of LLL, CoE concept of EDC and SP current main aim in strengthening and building of human capital are compatible policies that citizens and elites in the SEE should embrace in tackling 21st century challenges, social exclusion being one of them. Political leaders of WB should be fewer opportunists and focus more to development education of their voters.   They should give realistic and balanced picture of life in developing countries and countries in transition. They should clearly distance themselves from disaster stories of unfamiliar and romantic descriptions of the past, encouraging instead an objective and balanced treatment of the issue of development. Political elites of the WB   should make it clear that sustainable and equitable development is the common basis for the future of the world in which we live, as well in each local community of the region too.  In other to achieve that, countries of the WB should conclude their transition by creating functional and accountable states that recognize and understand, effaced by rights based models, the duality of citizenship: that citizens are both individuals and active members of the whole, the public as a political community.

SP and CoE are at the moment assisting countries of the region to functionally decentralize and     improve local self governance. New framework of institutions and procedures should enable the participation of citizens to be tied into the contribution of elected representatives in the forming of collective choice. Newly created community and local governances should be able to provide the conditions for reconstruction, and for high capacity for learning both of the nature of the problems faced and about the approaches. Traditionally, public services in the region have been delivered to the public with too little consultation and involvement. Democracy has been at a distance from the communities which it was created to serve. We are looking for a changing role of the local authority from service provision to a strategic role in identifying the needs of the wider community through strengthened processes of local democracy. New forms should be governments of difference, both responding to differences in needs and aspirations. New community and local governances should be communities of difference and identity:     The post-modern world is typically characterized, and SEE and WB especially, by clashes of cultural traditions whose values, histories and identities are said to be chronically agonistic and thus rival and incommensurable, compounded by a poverty of recognition and mutual understanding. Traditions shape 'critical points of deep and significant difference which constitute 'what we really are, or rather - since history has intervened - 'what we have become. The challenge for the new local  governances is to discover processes which can reconcile the valuing of difference with the need for shared understanding and agreement about public purpose that dissolves prejudice and discrimination. They should create a frame for pursue   of   active citizenship, that regard each other as citizens with shared responsibility for collaborative making of the communities in which they are to live. Embedding LLL strategies in this process is going to be curtailing for the fulfillment of this challenge. One thing I have learned through life is to make my speeches short. Or have I?

Bearing in mind that we are actually opening LLL Festival, I hope that we may find some of this suggestions how to cope with the future in CDs form, or like computer games or sitcoms. My assistants claim that they are actually submitting them to intensive EDC course by watching Sex and City and Crime Scene Investigators. What can I say? It seems to me that LLL is all about that you can actually learn old dog new tricks.

Thank you for your attention.