The visit to the Embassy by the Karlstad delegation is a result of a cooperation between the Swedish city of Karlstad and the Slovene capital Ljubljana, which started back in 1999. In 2001, during the first Swedish Presidency of the European Union, the cities of Ljubljana and Karlstad were selected by the Swedish government to carry out projects and thus strengthen bilateral cooperation within a range of municipal sectors. The project called “From two perspectives to one dimension of the new Europe” was aimed to develop contacts and exchange of music groups, photo exhibitions, joint seminars on tourism, youth, democracy and rural development, including study visits to Ljubljana in fields of tourism, education, sports and business and study visits to Karlstad in the fields of education, youth, environment and employment.
Among these projects, the Swedish Slovene cooperation on educational level deserves special attention. The Learning Teacher Network is coordinated by the Directorate of Education in Karlstad and has five Slovene and nine Swedish schools and institutions as partners and members. Within this network, several conferences have been organised, one of which took place in Ljubljana in 2006 and was attended by 35 Slovene and 41 Swedish participants. The next international conference “Creative Learning for a Sustainable World” will also take place in Ljubljana on October 1- 4, 2009.
During the visit of delegation from the city of Karlstad in January 2009, the following issues were discussing and agreed on for future cooperation between Karlstad and Ljubljana:
Environment: sustainable mobility, energy production and waste management, pollution (land, water, air)
Education: education for sustainable development including the social, economic and environmental dimensions, transfer of good practices in pre-schools and compulsory schools, exchange of knowledge, for example in areas such as inclusion and prevention programmes, quality and school self-evaluation concepts and reporting, a common Ljubljana and Karlstad pre-school e-portal
Youth: youth and media (related to the World Summit on Media for Children and Youth, which will take place in Karlstad on June 20-24, 2010)
Read more about Karlstad, the twin city of Ljubljana