22 December 2022, Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Today the Final Conference of the EU funded project “Empowering Independent Teachers Associations in Uzbekistan” took place in Tashkent. Teachers, representatives and members of newly established teachers’ associations, representatives of government agencies, nongovernmental institutions and international organizations, as well as experts participated in the event organized by Teachers’ Association in cooperation with Innovation, Technology and Strategy Center under the Ministry of Public Education and the European Union Delegation to Uzbekistan.

Rustam Karimjonov, Deputy Minister of Public Education of Uzbekistan, Alexander Zenebe, Charge d’Affaires of the European Union in Uzbekistan, and Farrukh Mirbabaev, CEO of Innovation, Technology and Strategy Center delivered keynote speeches at the opening ceremony of the Conference. Emphasizing the importance of teachers in quality education, Mr.Karimjonov noted that

“Improving teachers’ legal literacy will lead them to use associations for the development of education system and focus all their time and attention on teaching and professional development”.

Mentioning that 15 associations, including 1 national and 14 regional associations were created with the help of the project, Mr. Zenebe highlighted that

“The most difficult task has been accomplished: they have started working. The next step should be empowering them by building their capacities and providing necessary support. Today’s conference is one of these efforts directed at improving institutional capacities of the associations”.

The Conference consisted of three main parts. First, the organizers provided the participants with results achieved during the project. Project beneficiaries spoke about the support provided within the project and shared their opinions about its effectiveness, the role of NGOs in increasing the status of teachers’, protecting teachers’ rights and boosting their professional development, and other relevant topics.

The third part of the conference was held in the format of a training session: members of the associations and other interested teachers were able to boost their skills in three areas. First, the participants boosted their legal knowledge and skills essential for the successful management of associations. The participants learned how to find grants, what to consider in preparing proposals for grant competitions and how to effectively communication with donors in the second training session. The last training session was dedicated to networking.

Objectives of the Conference:

• to provide an overview of the activities conducted during the project and their results;
• to provide a platform to exchange opinions about the project, its impact, and the whole related environment in the country;
• to boost NGO management and grants management skills as well as leadership capabilities of members of the newly founded associations and other interested teachers with the help of capacity-building seminars.

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Background Information

The EU funded project Empowering Independent Teachers Associations in Uzbekistan was launched in January 2020. The main objectives of the project are to increase the legal literacy of teachers in order to encourage them to use their freedom of association and to promote the participation of teachers’ associations in protection of their rights, as well as in governance of schools.

Project components:

• Awareness campaign on freedom of association for teachers and on their role in defending their rights and combatting against the forced labour;
• Communication campaign to inform local authorities on fighting against forced labour and freedom of association of teachers;
• Establishment of a free service of legal, psychological and any other type of support for teachers in their fight against forced labour;
• Teachers Associations Support Programme: promoting the engagement to associations among the teachers by sub-granting to teachers’ associations;
• Capacity building of teachers’ associations through trainings and workshops by lawyers, human rights defenders;
• Launching a platform for teachers’ associations to report the documented cases of teachers rights violations and involving them to forced labour.

The first result of the project was the creation of Teachers Association (public association O‘qituvchilar assotsiatsiyasi) which was registered by the Ministry of Justice in June 2020. ITSM supported the association in its first projects – organizing National Teacher Prize of Uzbekistan (Ustoz 2020 and 2021) for which was trusted by the Ministry of Public Education. The project also organized training sessions on managing associations, networking, rights of teachers, psychological support and other topics for the administration, current and prospective members of the association. Also, legal and psychological support service was set and an online portal https://oqituvchilar.uz/ containing all relevant information about the opportunities of associations for teachers was developed.

With all of these activities implemented, teachers’ interest and their level of engagement for associations raised and by the end of 2022, the project team has received a dozen of requests from initiative groups to support them in creating the associations. During last 12 months, the project team supported a total of 17 groups with legal and administrative consultations, capacity building and communications with the Ministry of Justice and its regional departments as well as with the local government bodies. As a result, 14 regional associations have received their certificates of registration from regional departments of Justice – the whole process took more than 6 months, including rejections and resubmission of applications.

Awareness campaign on TV and online was one of the most regular activities of the project during the project lifetime. Several offline and online meetings were organized to raise the awareness of teachers’ rights and the opportunity of creating teachers’ associations to protect their rights, increase their legal literacy and professionalism. In total of 7 training sessions were dedicated to the corresponding topics, and around 300 teachers participated in these different awareness-raising events.

The Teachers Associations Support Programme of the activity has supported the newly created associations. Five regional associations were awarded and successfully implemented their projects focused on raising the legal literacy of teachers, awareness about their associations and attracting new members, capacity building, local and international networking and other activities. More than 500 educators participated in these activities organized in different formats.