Title: Mentoring – International Cooperations and Funding Opportunities: Best Practice & Pitfalls (Part I)
Facilitator and room number: Frank Hidden, Erna van der Werff; 1.103
Documented by: Salime Klingenfuß
Number of participants: 20
Who are we and to which institution do we belong?
The Open Education Community serves the needs of enthusiastic, dedicated teachers, trainers, students and other professionals in education with a community and sharing mind-set and an international orientation. It is a network passionate about advancing Open Education throughout Europe and beyond. The Open Education Community ensures innovative courses and practices do not end up on the shelf, but instead become widely used and get officially accredited and implemented in a sustainable way across Europe and beyond.
Learning Hub Friesland enables, drives and maximizes innovation in education in Friesland, the Netherlands. Learning Hub Friesland introduces pioneering approaches, methodologies and technologies. This includes also strategic planning of professional development for staff in line with individual needs and organisational objectives and increasing staffs capacity and professionalism to work at EU/international level. Educational materials developed by Learning Hub Friesland staff vary from curricula on student initiated company assignments and social entrepreneurial behaviour to ‘add on’ training programmes on internationalisation in entrepreneurship education.
Starting hypothesis:
Frank and Erna share a history of almost 10 years in the internationalisation of education, arranging funding for innovative practices and managing transfer of knowledge and cooperation between international partners. From 2012 onwards, Frank and Erna have supported MentorProgramma Friesland to internationalise and to successfully transfer their programme to other schools in Europe. The direct and indirect effects are widespread and have led to various follow-up initiatives such as the European Center for Evidence-Based Mentoring and programmes such as the SESAME-project on social entrepreneurship.
In the session, best practices and pitfalls regarding the international transfer of mentoring programmes and the application for European funding were discussed.
Sequence of content/methods:
The facilitators and participants shortly introduced themselves and their organisations. During the sessions different EU funding opportunities were outlined with the support of a powerpoint presentation. Different group activities were used to illustrate the approach they introduced to the participants.
Main argument presented by the facilitator:
The facilitator emphasised the importance of finding the right partner for the programme being developed, when starting a successful European collaboration project.
Main points of discussion:
It is very important to include all the experiences the project partners have as well as all of the potential impact achieved by the project when applying for funding.
Results of the session:
“Project Leader vs. Project Partner”: When you are involved in a European collaboration project for the first time, it is a good start to join as a partner and not directly as a leading partner. This will allow you to gain valuable experience that can be helpful for future projects.
Main statement highlighting the results of the discussion:
“You will go through a necessary and beneficial learning process while you take part in different European projects.”
One thing that was laughed about:
Almost all the participants laughed, when they realised that they had to undergo pretty much the same procedures, when they started the mentoring programmes and applied for funding, even though they come from different organisations in different areas and countries.