Second of three international trainings

Project Development,
19th to 23rd February| Shkoder, Albania

In the period from 19th to 23rd February, 2024, the second of three international trainings about project development, was held in Shkoder, Albania.

Agedna

The participants of the training were eight teachers from the two Albanian project partner schools: Hamdi Bushati and Hysen Çela and the first day started with an icebreaker for them to get to know each other – and the trainers – better.

After that, the participants and the trainers expressed their expectations for the training on a personal and professional level and a presentation of the “VET for Western Balkans” project was given and discussed by the participating teachers. The topic for the second part of the day, was an introduction to the frameworks and elements in the development of projects.

On the second day, participants learned how European funds work. In groups, they identified challenges at their VET schools that could be an issue for a project application and worked on developing a project idea. Through the example of ERASMUS+ projects, the participants learned about rationale, partnerships, project management, impact, dissemination and what other things should be paid attention to when developing a project.

The third day started with presentation of Regional Challenge Fund project by Montenegrin partners Danka Markuš and Marina Braletić, winners of three RCF grants. They explained what is it, what are the criteria, who can apply and how, and showed examples of approved projects. The first part of the day was finished with the presentation about approved RCF project from local school, by Erjona Puka.

The second part of the day started with presentations by students involved in RCF projects from Montenegro. Students presented how did they spent their practical classes in companies and what is the result of it. At the end of day, the Montenegrin partners shared their experience, since realization of first granted project has started last year.

On the fourth day of training advanced participants, group of two from each partner school from previous training, joined.

While new group of participants spent day with our guest trainee Danijel Đekić from Craft College Institution for Adult Education, from Zagreb, learning about EU Funding Opportunities for West Balkans, Theory of change, Micro credentials and Definitions and Examples from EU, the advanced ones spent the day with Montenegrin partners who made presentation of the newly granted RCF project in Montenegro

After step by step going through presentation, participants started filling in their own application forms, continuing work started in previous training.

First part of the fifth day, advanced participants had an online presentation about EU project, concrete example of how to find funds for project, how to plan the application, what are the considerations and activities, by our Slovenian partner Nataša Kristan, Šolski Center, Kranj. Using the ERASMUS platform, the participants got acquainted with the new project proposal which includes partners from our project, so they took the opportunity to discuss about activities and tasks.

The other group of participants, the new ones, went through the RCF application, concrete example from Montenegro. They worked through each section in detail to remove uncertainty and exchange ideas on how to fill out the application.

In the second part of the day, advanced participants presented their results of the work on applications. It was good for new participants to see that in this stage of training, every country group has almost filled application form for actual project proposal.

As the previous one, this training ended with agreement about home task and filling in online evaluation questionnaires in order for the external evaluator to sum up the feedback from all.

The training was performed by:

Ms. Bodil Mygind Madsen, European Senior Manager
Mrs. Niels Christian Frøkjær Vestergaard, European Senior Manager
Ms. Danka Markuš, teacher and school project coordinator
Ms. Marina Braletić, teacher and school project coordinator