Community Education Facilitators (CEFs)
UPDATE ON CEF PROGRAMME
Community Education Facilitators' Programme Under the Community Education Facilitators' Training and Support Programme 2008 AONTAS delivered a set of three regional meetings in the spring. These concentrated on Time and Stress Management.
Following these meetings a National Training Seminar was held in Athlone. The main aim of this was to enable the CEFs as one group to reflect on community education 8 years after the White Paper on Adult Education. The Training and Support Programme was put on hold in the summer of 2008 and following negotiations with the Department of Education and Science and the Training and Support Steering group will be subsumed into the VECs' CPD programmes.
Background
In Making an Impact (June 1999), the AONTAS response to the Green Paper on Adult Education, AONTAS recommended the establishment of Community Resource Workers as an essential part of the infrastructure needed for the development of the adult education service. This translated into the recommendation of the White Paper on Adult Education (2000) that Community Education Facilitators be employed at local level and work to programmes determined by the Adult Education Boards. There are now 37 Community Education Facilitators employed within the VECs' Adult Education Service .
Aims
The Training and Support Programme for the Community Education Facilitators (CEFs) based in AONTAS is designed to bring the CEFs together for information, support and training and enables the CEFs to collectively identify issues that could enhance their work.The Community Education Facilitators have to date been a major contributing factor to the development of a more integrated Adult Education Service which includes the involvement of the community sector providers. The aims of the programme are:
- To provide induction and on-going training to the Community Education Facilitators
- To provide a forum for networking of Community Education Facilitators at national level
- To enable the Community Education Facilitators to share information and models of good practice
- To keep the Community Education Facilitators informed on developments relevant to their work
- To support the Community Education Facilitators on an ongoing basis through continued contact, information and research
Steering Group
The CEF Training and Support programme was overseen by a national steering group comprising of members of the Further Education Section; IVEA; AEOA; Pobal and AONTAS.
The Terms of Reference of the Steering Group were:-
- To oversee the work programme of the National Training/Support Programme Co-ordinator for Community Education Facilitators (CEFs)
- To approve the training/support programme for CEFs and guide its implementation
- To develop and maintain links with the Strategic Management Initiative for CEOs/AEOs of VECs, so as to ensure complementarity of both training initiatives.
The CEFs informed the development of the programme through representation on the Programme planning sub-group.
