From Feb. 17 to 21 this year, the West Visayas State University through the College of Education plays host to the second Transnational Training of Trainers of Project FORTH or Formation of Teachers in Challenged Areas in the Philippines that is co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.

This three-year project gathered 73 delegates coming from participating HEIs in the Philippines and in Europe as well as significant partners in the country.  The five universities, including WVSU, will be working on six course modules that aim to create a system of quality, motivation and support to teacher training in a number of challenged areas in the Philippines that could serve as a model of teacher training for similar contexts in the world. This will be at the master’s level with a preparatory course at the undergraduate level.

The five “complementary universities” participating in Project FORTH are the following:  Polytechnic University of the Philippines – (PUP) Manila, Centro Escolar University – (CEU) Manila, University of Southeastern Philippines – (USeP) Davao and University of St. La Salle-(USLS) Bacolod, and West Visayas State University – (WVSU).

The  representatives of European Universities leading in Educational Reform and International Organizations in Europe that are in the Iloilo training this week are: University of Groningen, the Netherlands;  Universidad de Deusto in Bilbao, Spain; University of Bologna in Bologna, Italy; Education for an Interdependent in Brussels, Belgium, Fundación InteRed in Madrid, Spain.

Other significant partners in the Philippines are the Commission on Higher Education, Philippine Association for Teachers and Educators, Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization, Regional Center for Educational Innovation and Technology, and Teresian Association International, Inc. while the associate partners are the Department of Education’s Divisions of Manila, Bacolod City, Negros Occidental, Iloilo, and Davao.