One week to build project development skills

External border regions hungry for cooperation; potential project applicants from Partner Countries are impatient to know more, to learn, to understand. TESIM’s first four Capacity Building Weeks have come to an end, but given the high number of requests for participation that could not be met, more are planned for the near future.  The sign comes straight from the regions: territorial cooperation is seen as a great way to exploit the untapped growth potential in border areas, with the view to achieving a higher degree of territorial integration.

April has been a busy month for Interreg NEXT potential applicants. There are four programmes that offer funding for projects through open calls for proposals, and time is running out to take advantage of these opportunities.  Building good-quality cross-border and transnational projects can prove challenging to many eligible organizations, especially for newcomers. How to build solid partnerships? How to develop a meaningful project strategy? How to draw up a realistic budget? TESIM is here to give answers to most common questions of potential applicants.

Strengthening the project development and management capacities of eligible organisations in CBC Partner Countries has been a strand of TESIM support for many years. In the current programming period, we offer Interreg NEXT project practitioners new products and services under the single label “GoForCooperation”.

First of all, there is the online capacity-building platform “GoForCooperation”. It includes the updated materials from the GoForENICBC platform as well as newly developed material, in order to meet as much as possible the needs of the Interreg NEXT project applicants. They can find video tutorials on project development, building partnerships and budget planning (including a specific tutorial on flat rates) in English and French, as well as with Ukrainian and Romanian subtitles. The tutorials subtitled in Turkish, Georgian and Armenian are expected to be released by mid-May.

In April, the platform was complemented by the launch of GoForCooperation Weeks, a series of practical online trainings for organisations from CBC Partner Countries who have never applied to Interreg NEXT or ENI CBC, or who were not successful in the past calls. TESIM experts offer a one-week capacity building module, consisting of five 2-hour online sessions, which focus on building generic competences required for project development, underlying the common mistakes made during application.

This highly interactive training – including exchanges and exercises through quiz, polls and case studies in small groups – was greatly appreciated by the participants. The week was repeated in four languages – French, English, Ukrainian and Romanian – and was restricted to 40 registered participants per module to keep a live working mode. The April GoForCooperation Weeks gathered potential applicants from nine Partner Countries – Armenia, Georgia, Ukraine, Republic of Moldova, Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine, Türkiye and Tunisia. Due to a very high interest for the trainings –the request to participation exceeded almost 5 time the available places – TESIM will repeat the modules in the coming weeks (May – early June) for those on the waiting list.

Yet, our capacity-building activities do not stop here. Later in the year, TESIM will offer online trainings to project beneficiaries which will focus on various aspects of project implementation. Follow us on social media to stay tuned!

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