Marija Stanič from Ljubljana

Proposer: Municipality of Kanal, Miran Ipavec (mayor)

Marija Stanič's life story reveals just what a creative woman can do to help improve the quality of life not just in one village but in a whole valley, in a single employment period. A tireless deviser of adult education programmes, she has - despite moving to a commercially more interesting environment - remained faithful to the people living by the Soča. This is especially significant since the Soča Valley is a social risk area, a long way from centres of education. After a few years of teaching mathematics and physics at school, she was employed by Salonit Anhovo, where she ran the education centre and thus opened new possibilities for many employees. Her professional career has been full of innovations and all have been geared towards better quality adult education. In Kanal ob Soči she was the first trained study circle mentor. The most successful study circle, Ceramics, grew into a society which is still active today and is not only the source of personal creative fulfilment but of a quality range of souvenirs for tourists. Marija Stanič was also among the first participants to undergo training for the running of a programme designed to raise the level of adult literacy, in 1992, and still runs these programmes today; her experience in the field of numerical literacy is valuable. In the Learning for Life Success project she facilitates partnership-style cooperation between the profession and practitioners. Without such individuals, the movement to raise the literacy level would have no power! She has organised training programmes for people with fewer educational qualifications and for the unemployed; through enterprise workshops she has tried to encourage people to choose self-employment. She was behind the setting-up of an e-point in Kanal, which has enabled local people to receive training in e-commerce. In recent years she has set up a higher education programme offering qualifications in sales and transport technology. She incorporates new communications/learning possibilities into the implementation of the programme and thus through the development of a web environment also enables education for those who are unable to participate in traditional forms of education, whether because of distance, employment or family obligations.