The Public Open University Zagreb – POUZ (Croatia)
The Public Open University Zagreb (POUZ) is the largest, non-profit institution for adult education and culture in the Republic of Croatia. Its tradition goes far back to the year 1907. when Open University was established as University extension. The purpose of university extension lectures, designed for the common people, is to spread the knowledge of science and culture among all those who could not or were not allowed to attend university extension lectures, as well as for those who are academically educated.
Its mission to meet the need for adult education (including young adults) has been continuing for over 100 years. The founder of the POUZ is the city of Zagreb, i.e. municipal authorities.
Nowadays it has 300 educational programs, 12,000 students per year, 64 employees and 500 part-time job professors and trainers. It offers a broad spectrum of educational programs – starting from elementary and secondary school programs, continuing to higher education, as well as trainings, including vocational training and retraining. POUZ is mostly oriented to vocational adult education for labour market (employees and unemployed persons), art courses (art workshops, music programmes, dances, photographies and new medias, galleries, etc.). In POUZ there are also programmes for children and youth (creative workshops etc.). Since 2010, POUZ has a part of its courses and programmes in a model of distant learnig, using Moodle platform and other e-learning tools.
Target Audience
POUZ is producing educational and cultural programs for all age groups (from preschool kids, schools children, youth to adults and seniors), specially targeting to those with less opportunities (youth in threat of social inclusion – pour, early drop out from schools, Roma, unemployed and Deaf people).
The team
POUZ has 64 employed staff, most of them are programme menagers and teachers (43) and others are administrative and supportive staff. The Department for Culture and publishing has 11 employes (1 head of department, 4 programe menagers that are leading programs and projects in dance, theater, music, visual arts, photography and new media, 3 librarians, 1 book editor, 1 desktop publisher and 1 administrative person). Sandra Banić Naumovski as the Head of the Department and dance artist (teacher and choreographer) will be involved in the project as artist and researcher. Vlasta Rešetić Nezirović as administrative staff will be in charge of the project administration, Renata Hleb (accountant specialized for EU project) will be in charge of all the payments and prepare project reports on behalf of POUZ as the co-organizer. Davor Rogić, associated video artist, will be in charge of video shooting for the project purposes (Moocs).
The learners
In it’s programs, The Department for Culture has around 500 students all age groups a year (from preschool children to seniors). Those are the students that are regulary signed in in a whole year programs in the Arts (VET programmes) or they are attending monthly hobby programmes. For Polart Circle, we will address more specifically the youth groups we work with.
Network
POUZ is the member of the European Network for adult education in Danubean region – DANET[:]