The municipality of Rezekne takes recognition in the field of international cooperation
On Friday, 27 November, the Latvian local government and the Taipei mission in the Republic of Latvia honoured five more active municipalities in the implementation of development cooperation and development education projects: Rezekne municipality, Bauska municipality, Gulbene municipality, Jelgava municipality and Ogre municipality. The aim of the event was to highlight five good examples in the field of international cooperation projects and inspire other Latvian municipalities.
With the support of the European Union programme “Comenius”, “Youth in Action”, “Culture”, “Europe for Citizens”, “Erasmus plus”, “Nordplus”, as well as with the support of Latvian-Lithuanian, Latvian-Estonian-Russian cross-border cooperation programmes, many of the Rēzekne municipality's educational, cultural, youth specialists, project managers and representatives of the administration have participated in the exchange of experience seminars and have not adopted the name in many European Union countries such as Bulgaria, Greece, Iceland, Lithuania, Estonia, Russia, Romania, Spain, Turkey, Sweden and elsewhere. With the help of international programmes, a water tourism development centre “lighthouse” was established at Luban Lake, a well-equipped Lūznavas and Anchupan parks, a bus hoist for people in wheelchairs and other works. Since 2006, a successful collaboration with the Rēzekne municipality has been established with the American Latvian Association, who visits one of the school's schools during the summer education programme “Hello, Latvia”.
The municipality of Rezekne has entered into formal cooperation agreements with the municipalities of Belarus, Lithuania, Norway and Moldova, which allow both the Rēzekne municipality and their amateurs, educational staff, sports teams, social workers, spatial planners and other field experts to visit partner countries and experience one another.
It should be noted that in 2015, the municipality has launched the project “Global Schools”, which received funding from the European Union “DEAR” (Development Education and Awareness Raising-EN), which translates into development education and awareness raising on global issues. During the project until 2018, teachers of pre-schools and primary schools will learn how to talk to young children about, for example, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, poverty, hunger, and how not to be indifferent, seeing the suffering of other people.
Every new experience makes people richer. International projects have not made anyone rich in material terms, but seeing and analysing the difficulties of other countries and municipalities, the problems and particularly achievements and innovative ideas, the people of Rezekne have become more open, smarter and richer. Thanks to these people, Rēzekne novada parish is becoming more common and more beautiful every year.
For reference
Taiwan (capital Taipei) is one of the most technologically developed countries, one of the “four Asian tigers” along with Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea. You can name many well-known brands coming from Taiwan, such as Acer, asus, HTC. Not so famous Taiwanese corporation Foxconn is the owner of electronics factories across the world where iPhone, iPad, Amazon Kindle, Sony PlayStation and many other goods are sold by American and Japanese corporations with their logos.
Inta Rimšāne,
Local Communications Officer of the municipality of Rezekne
