The partner of the Hellenic Cultural Center Sofia Roilidou made a presentation-introduction to Greece and Greek culture, on Tuesday, April 20, at the State School of Languages of Pozuelo Madrid, the Spanish partner of the Grundtvig program "Making Cross Cultural Friends": This is an English Department of the School with responsible teacher Patricia Andreo. Eight people, students and teachers, a team from Spain who will soon visit Greece as part of the program, the meeting of all the European partners will be in Athens, April 28 to May 2, 2010. The presentation of Greek culture was in English and other students attended too, a total of 25 people. The presentation lasted two hours, began with a quiz question on Greece for heating, while giving further explanations and details. After a short video of Athens was projected and through this video they got a little bit more familiar with neighborhoods, monuments, museums worth visiting, of Athens, while experimenting a little bit more of greek culture and atmosphere. Then the students divided into groups have read a few pages from the book "Learn Greek in 25 Years: A crash course for the linguistically challenged" of Brian Church, publications Athens News, 1st edition 1999, summaries of which were presented later. The book is humorous and then was explained that it is not that difficult to learn Greek, proof of that was the greek course followed, in which all managed to say the alphabet and learn some basic phrases in greek. Then a powerpoint was presented on Greek dishes, explaining what is each plate and they were invited ouzo, vanilla-submarine and delights because ... Hungry Bear does not dance ..! (as the greek proverb saying). At the time of eating, they were seeing a presentation of Greek dances on video and then they all danced together hasaposerviko, slowly learning the dance steps at beginning and then faster, at the increasingly fast pace of the music. For the farewell gifts/bags with material (maps, info, etc) were given, that were kindly offered by the Hellenic Organisation of Tourism in Madrid and the speaker was donated by the School with a book about Pozuelo, this beautiful area of Madrid, and a book on Public Hotels / Castles in Spain (paradores). After thanks that were mutually given they all went together for dinner at a restaurant near to the school where talking about Greece and Greek culture continued in a more leisury pace making toasts in Greek with. sangria..! It was a very pleasant evening for everyone with an introductory 2-hour course about Greek culture, language, food and music / dance, before leaving for the meeting in Athens, and a very nice dinner.

250 people from all over Greece have participated to the Conference, which, apart from Plenary presentations included Workshops too, in order to offer participants the chance of substantial participation and ideas exchange on life long learning. In the Conference the Vice Minister of Education and Lifelong Learning Ms Evi Christofilopoulou and the General Secretary of Lifelong Learning Mr Efthimios Bakas were present.

The Director of the Hellenic Culture Centre, Ms Ifigenia Georgiadou has been honored to receive an invitation to attend the Conference "Grundtvig, a decade of European innovation in adult learning" by the European Commission, among 250 educators from all over Europe. The conference was held in Brussels, January 26-28, 2010, and brought together experts in the field of adult learning, European, national, regional and local policy-makers, representatives of successful Grundtvig projects and adult educators. At the Conference, opened by Ms. Marta Ferreira-Lourenco, Head of Unit Adult Education of the Commission, some experts key speakers and policy- makers referred to adult education policies and practices (Ms. Maria Joao Rodrigues, Mr. Alan Smith, Ms. Helene Clark, and Ms. Anne Degrand from the European Parliament)

Interesting workshops on Access to education, on Recognition of non formal learning, on Professional development of adult education staff, on Migrants, Senior citizens, Learners with disabilities and special needs, on Active Citizenship and on the Arts took place.

Ms. Georgiadou presented successful Grundtvig projects where she participates, met representatives of other Adult Education Organizations, and discussed with them about future cooperation.