NTC weekend in Uzice
The best investment in the future is investing in our children!
Guided by this idea, on the last weekend of March, we organized NTC Weekend at First Primary School King Peter II. Within this event, a series of seminars and workshops were organized for children, parents and teachers, all with the aim of stimulating the development of learning potential in children.
The NTC program is accredited by the Ministry of education, science and technology development.
Thanks to the exceptional collaboration of the school, the NTC Center and Live Rich foundation, more than 400 participants had the opportunity to learn about the basic level of NTC seminars over the weekend, which is a phenomenal basis for further development of children, parents and teachers.
The classrooms, the teacher’s office, and even the gym of First Elementary School was not large enough to accommodate all interested Uzice citizens, which exceeded all our expectations. We have also interpreted this response by Uzice citizens as a clear message that similar events should be organized in the future.
Our intention is to give the Uzice children something that is not only material but extremely valuable, probably more valuable that we can imagine.
NTC program author Ranko Rajovic, an internal medicine specialist, a master of neurophysiology and a sports science doctor, says more than 50% of children have developmental disabilities. He added that the goal of the NTC program is to teach children to think, not to memorize.
“As a problem at school, we see that children cannot sit, count, write, read … In fact, the problem arIse before school, and was made by parents, by overprotecting children. What is important is that we change the way we learn. Reproductive learning is the lowest level of learning, and most of our children, unfortunately, do so. We need to teach children to think and to learn to think as soon as they speak. The plan is to work on establishing an NTC center in Uzice in the future, as it is one of the few major cities in Serbia that does not have one. We hope to have a center in Uzice as of autumn”, Rajovic said on this occasion.
Ranko Rajovic is a UNICEF associate for early education and guest lecturer at colleges in several countries. He is the founder of Mensa Serbia, and is the initiator and co-founder of Mensa Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro.
The co-author of the NTC program for schools is Uros Petrovic, a writer, author of 12 books in the field of literature for children, he has held a thinking workshop for children from 4 to 8 years.
“The children have shown to parents and teachers that when something is interesting to them, there are no unsolvable tasks. It is well known that we in the NTC Learning System take care not to overprotect children. Simply, abilities are born by obstacles being met and overcome, and if we remove obstacles, that ability will not develop. Our goal is to reach as many adults as possible so that we can invest in our future, which is our children”, said Uros Petrovic.
The ultimate goal of the NTC program is to foster the development of the learning potential of preschool and school children through specific activities based on modern neurophysiological and psychological knowledge. The program is aimed at the whole population of preschool and school children, at the level of recognizing their specialties and stimulating their abilities.
The continuation of cooperation between the Foundation and the NTC Center is certain and workshops for gifted children are underway. The second level of cooperation will also take place under the auspices of the LiveRich Foundation, between the NTC Center and the educational institutions of Uzice, in which the youngest Uzice citizens will soon have the opportunity to more intensively develop their full intellectual potential.
It is our great joy and gratitude to be able to contribute with our work to the children of Uzice to grow and develop with the highest quality knowledge and information, which will serve them to maximize their potential.
