Non-Formal Education of Children in the Context of Transnational Families Life

The child is the future of society and its potential. Childhood is the most vulnerable stage of life, when it is important to respond to the child's needs and also to ensure his rights. The United Nations Convention mentions the following basic principles for ensuring children‘s rights: (1) non-discrimination; (2) the best interests of the child; (3) the right of the child to express his opinion and to be heard; (4) the child's right to live and development. Child development includes the creation of a safe, creative environment that promotes the child's development and ensuring the freedom to act in it. In order to ensure the comprehensive process of the child's development in childhood, formal and non-formal education is important. Transnational families face the challenge of how to ensure quality of non-formal education of children when one or both parents live at a distance. The aim of the presentation is to analyze the role of non-formal education in the child‘s development process in Lithuanian transnational families. A combination of several researches was used to reveal this goal. First, the study of focused discussion groups with experts from various fields of non-formal education in Lithuania. Second, a qualitative study was conducted with members of Lithuanian transnational families. In order to comprehensively analyze the experiences of transnational families, both parents and child(ren) of the same family were interviewed. The visual map method was used for conducting interviews, the uniqueness of which is manifested through the opportunity to receive not only verbal, but also non-verbal information, to engage the research participant and to obtain visualizations of the research participants' descriptions. The conducted research revealed the main challenges faced by transnational families during the provision of non-formal education for children, highlighted the resources used by families, good practices, possible solutions and recommendations.