04/02/2021

At the end of January 2021 within one week KSUAE participated in the Grant-holders' meeting of newly selected Capacity Building in Higher Education (CBHE) projects. As a consequence of the travel restrictions imposed because of the outbreak of the COVID19, this year’s event was entirely online.

This event was dedicated to the representatives of CBHE projects selected in 2020 under the Call for proposals EAC/A02/2019.We should mention that last year KSUAE's application with the project "Capacity Building in Sustainablity for Architectural Heritage" for the Erasmus+ Key Action 2 was selected by EACEA.

The overall aim of the meeting is to address in detail issues related to the implementation of the CBHE projects, the operational management of the grant agreement and the financial rules applicable to the CBHE grant. The event also offered the opportunity for new and experienced coordinators to network and to share experience and good practice.

The meeting was divided into plenary sessions, parallel regional workshops, e-Booths and bilateral helpdesks:
1.The plenary sessions addressed the operational management of the grant agreement and the financial rules applicable.
2.The regional workshops addressed aspects related to the implementation of our project in the targeted Region, in our case in Russia.
3.The e-Booths offered a virtual space to foster networking and the exchange of information with key actors for the implementation of projects.
4.The bilateral helpdesks and meetings allowed individual projects to meet their EACEA Project Officers.

The participation in the conference was mandatory for all selected projects under the above-mentioned call. 

Among the headliners of the first day plenary session there was Prof. Muhammad Yunus, 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Winner as keynotespeaker. The speakers were also Ralf Rahders Head of Unit, EACEA (chairperson); Themis Christophidou Director-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture and Sophie Beernaerts Head of Department Erasmus+ and EU Aid Volunteers-EACEA.
For the other plenary sections, the regional workshops, helpdesks and the e-Booths the number of projects representatives was limited to a maximum of two persons per project, namely:
1.The project coordinator from the coordinating institution University of L'Aquila.
2.One representative from one of the beneficiary institutions located in a Partner Country. Our University became such an institution.

During the bilateral meetings and helpdesks the EACEA Project Officer Andrea Murzi that coordinates our project was interested in ways of the implementation of our project in general and pointed out strong and some other points of the application that should be reconsidered a little at the beginning of the project. Prof Anna Tozzi, University of L'Aquila, and Dr Olga Poroshenko, KSUAE, outlined their views what steps would be made to improve the application and submitted several questions to the Officer on management and financial issues of the project.

The representatives of the National Erasmus+ Offices in Russia and in Armenia participated in the meetings too.

All the participants of the bilateral meetinng agreed to have a Kick-off meeting in the nereast future where Andrea Murzi will be invited too.