Title: Mentoring – International Cooperations and Funding Opportunities: Best Practice & Pitfalls (Part II)
Facilitator and room number: Frank Hidden, Erna van der Werff; 1.103
Documented by: Salime Klingenfuß
Number of participants: 5
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/questions:
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.
The session is a pressure cooker workshop for European funding applications.
Sequence of content:
The facilitators shortly introduced themselves and their organisations. For the introduction of the participants and some further introduction of themselves they used the online survey game “Kahoot!”. They also used a powerpoint presentation during their lecture and then answered individual questions. The presentation focused on how to submit project proposals according to the EU criteria and how to fit mentoring programmes into the requirements of the financing programme “Erasmus+/Erasmus+ Youth”.
Main arguments presented by the facilitator:
Mentoring programmes meet the requirements of Erasmus+ Youth and Erasmus+, if they reach out to vitalise young people and promote the empowerment of young people as well as if they are striving to improve mentoring programmes by further educating youth workers. Programmes working with migrants and refugees are placed in the field of adult education and therefore qualify for a funding through Erasmus+.
Main points of discussion:
- What are fundamental impacts worth being mentioned in project proposals?
- How does the aim of your project contribute to Europe’s aims?
Results of the session:
- The framework of funding has to be met, when applying for EU funding with a project idea.
- Instead of composing the project idea as a schedule by chronologically writing down the project idea, one should start with the (possible) impact of the project and then base the project proposal on what is needed to achieve the impact. The fundamental change (social change/economic growth, etc.) you want to contribute to should definitely be included in the project proposal.
Main statement highlighting the results of the discussion:
“Work towards aims that are big. Even if the impact you can achieve with your project is small, it can directly contribute to the big European aim. Find a way in which you can do that! Describe explicitly what you are trying to contribute to and in which way.”
One thing that was laughed about:
The question about the facilitators age difference in the online survey game made everyone laugh.