Adult education closes gaps, opens opportunities

By Laila Azzeh. As a communication skills trainer, Samira Siouf felt that she “lacked something” despite her many years of service. Working at the Queen Zein Al Sharaf Institute for Development for eight years, Siouf said that she was “good” at what she was doing, but could not attribute the communication methods she was teaching to their corresponding social sciences.
“It was teaching by experience, rather than by knowledge,” she told The Jordan Times on Wednesday.
After getting the chance to attend a three-month intensive course held by the Institute of International Cooperation of the German Adult Education Association (dvv international), Siouf said she felt more “confident” and better equipped to “fulfil the requirements of her job”.
Siouf was among 25 beneficiaries who received training under the Adult Education for Development programme, which was highlighted at a conference titled “Closing Gaps, Opening Opportunities: Adult Education and Lifelong Learning in the Middle East”, which opened on Wednesday.
Addressing the conference, HRH Princess Basma underlined the importance of the adult learning approach in building societies, ensuring the participation of everyone in the development process and eliminating poverty and unemployment.
“Lifelong learning was one of the strategies that we adopted in the work of the Jordanian Hashemite Fund for Human Development [JOHUD], but we used different names to describe what we were doing,” the princess said, noting that developing the capabilities of human resources was one of the terms used to refer to the fund’s activities. Read more...