International Adult Learners Week
in Europe

Network of Learning festivals

Maria Bamert-Widmer: A woman goes her own way - Participant in the International Adult Learners' Study Tour in May 2005

What does a woman do after being a mother and housewife for 20 years? When she doesn’t have an official professional qualification? When the people around her find her current position to be all right the way it is? She has to go her own way. And so I went my own way. It was a bumpy, tiring road that cost me a lot, but in the end brought me to where I wanted to be. My first education was training as a postal operations assistant which wasn’t officially acknowledged. When I tried to get back into the labour market after 20 years I noticed that I wouldn’t get far without a basic education. I gathered all of my strength and courage and at the age of 40 got my degree as a sales manager. My real goal was to teach other adults, and so I took a further education course to become an adult educator. The new found self-consciousness, which I got from my further education courses, helped me to achieve financial independence. And I kept getting closer to reaching my goal: I went to the United States and was coached to become a qualified instructor.

Today I am where I wanted to be. On the long road that lies behind me now, I kept going forward, one step at a time, not giving up when times were hard, and kept developing myself.

 

Laurenz Wirz: A carpenter studies economics

As an independent carpenter and sole earner for a family of six, I had to admit one day that my severe health problems would quickly make it impossible for me to do my job as a carpenter. The financial and time pressure that was created left me only one way out: forward. I decided on rather short notice that I wanted to study economics, and get my qualification as an economics teacher. I had to struggle because I was still running my own carpentry business on the side, but four years later I graduated. These four years saw a lot of ups and downs: I broke both of my feet during my studies and therefore could not meet a deadline. My family helped out whenever they could. Another major worry I had during my studies was how to make ends meet, but then the canton and the city helped me to get the biggest possible grants. One of my former employers lent me money, without charging interest. And I also got great support from my lecturers.

I am a teacher now, grateful to all those helped me, and to myself for biting through.