erasmus +

Between January 19^th and 21^st, the V2WORK Vietnamese partners gathered together at Thu Dau Mot University, with the EU partners joining in online during the afternoons, to present the work they had done in the framework of project work packages 2, Capacity Building, and 4, Implementation of Enhanced Services.

During the workshop partners shared their experiences (including the challenges they had to overcome) and results in the implementation of online courses, career days and new employability, employment and entrepreneurship services by the career centres. As each partner presented their work, the others had a chance to ask questions, share recommendations for future actions, and do a short evaluation of each of the results.

Overall the results were very positive, with many of the partners getting very useful advice from their colleagues on how to continue implementing these activities, and others getting inspiration on how to develop something similar in their own institutions

EMINENT partners organised an online Project Meeting on Friday 21^st January 2021. Colleagues in Haiti and Europe Union reunited after the Christmas vacations via videoconferencing to formulate a feasible workplan to catch-up delays of project implementation. Along these lines, partners welcomed the good news about the official approval by the EACEA to extend the period for the implementation of the EMINENT project up to April 2022. This will become a great opportunity for the project to compensate the disruption generated by the COVID-19 pandemic and recovered action.

EMINENT consortium will focus the next 4 months to finalise the design of their internal quality assurance systems at faculty level, conduct self-assessment activities as well as articulate policy proposals within the Roadmap document action.

In the framework of European project MATE past December, 21 local students of the University of Alicante were trained in the Human Universals or Commonalities concept to further become MATE facilitators.

Donald E. Brown, American professor of anthropology, in his book “Human Universals” (1991), explains that human universals or commonalities "comprise those features of culture, society, language, behaviour, and psyche for which there are no known exception". In other words, they are attributes that characterise us all or which we have adopted collectively during human evolution and progress.

The China Intellectual Property Management Network (CIPnet) Launch Event was virtually hosted on December 11, 2020 by Southwest University in Chongqing, China. The Launch Event included a presentation of the China Intellectual Property Management Network and its activities, and was followed by the conference “Managing IP at Universities. From IP Awareness Building to Commercialization of Research Results”. Presentations were delivered both by the CIPnet project partners and invited guests and structured into the following panel sessions: IP awareness building at universities; IP management at medical sector; Specifics of commercialization of research results. The event was attended by more than 80 managers, directors, leaders of TTOs, persons involved in commercialization and management of IP at Chinese universities.

On December 17th, 2020, took place the 1st On-line Conference of the ANTENA project entitled Internationalization of Research, coordinated by the University of Alicante. This activity is the beginning of a series of conferences whose objective is to present topics of interest to the partners within the framework of the project, as well as to open a space to share good practices and enriching experiences of the consortium. This initiative arises to keep learning active and temporarily replace the project's training plan until global mobility is activated and ANTENA's face-to-face workshops and activities are resumed.

This on-line conference was in the hands of Dr. Roberto Escarré, Research Management Service Director of the University of Alicante, where he shared the theory, motivations, measurement as well as institutional and individual practices in the matter.

On account of the disruption caused by the COVID-19 crisis, ACCESS project is scaling up its virtual presence across a wide array of conferences, seminars and events, directed towards raising-awareness on inclusion, accessibility and disability at Higher Education level in the Caribbean region. In consequence, ACCESS partners have recently participated in III INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF INCLUSIVE TECHNOLOGY AND EDUCATION – CONTIE 2020 with representatives from TEC Costa Rica, the INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION WEEK organized by the INTEC and the “Dialogue: Interaction and dignified treatment of people with disabilities from a rights perspective" celebrated by UNAPEC.

This strategy obeys to the necessity to bypass international travel restrictions and face-to-face gathering limitations stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.  As such, ACCESS ensures maxim outreach of dissemination actions directed towards key stakeholders at University level, which work towards building up a Higher Education system for all and leaving no one behind. Connecting with students with disabilities, general student population, administrative and academic staff from the Universities, political actors and disability NGOs is key to ensure exploitation and sustainability of ACCESS project results. Virtual events are now and considering circumstances an optimal platform to maximise engagement in Costa Rica, Dominican Republic and Cuba.

The University the Alicante participated in the Erasmus+ INNOVA project virtual pre-Kick Off Meeting on 11th December 2020. Led by the Coordinator, the University San Francisco Xavier de Chuquisaca from Sucre (Bolivia), all INNOVA consortium members partaked with representatives from Bolivia, Paraguay. Ireland and Spain. This was a first-time reunion organized through an online platform and with the goal to introduce partners to the main objectives of the project.

Partners also had the opportunity to discuss next steps, preliminary strategies  and tentative schedules to implement project activities. INNOVA partners agreed to celebrate the face-to-face Kick Off Meeting in Sucre (Bolivia) from 21^st  to 26^th February 2021. It will become a crucial opportunity to devote hands-on work on project issues and get to know each better for future cooperation.

Amidst the COVID-19 crisis, ACCESS continues moving forward with project actions. While the impact of Universities closures and lockdowns in Costa Rica, Cuba and Dominican Republic has been felt on projects activities, ACCESS partners renewed their commitment on tackling inclusion, accessibility and disability through project actions. In September and November 2020, ACCESS consortium organized 2 on-line coordination meetings to outline priorities for intervention and shift project activities to an exclusive virtual modality until the COVID-19 pandemic recedes globally.

Through intense exchange ACCESS partners agreed upon conducting project activities online focusing on the following areas of intervention: resume data collection for the Needs Analysis, progressing with the establishment of the Support Centers in each partner country  and intensifying online dissemination actions. The consensus reach between all members of the Consortium is been confirmed via bilateral meetings conducted to provide personalized support to partners in order to overcome the struggles that they are facing during the COVID-19 pandemic.