The first week of April 2019 has been intense for the project FASTER, with the organization of its Steering Committee Meeting, the kick off of the Capacity Building for Research Excellence program and a second workshop to forster the creation of the Project’s Living FAS Lab.
📅 1- 4 April 2019
📍 Tunis, Tunisia
Members of the H2020 project FASTER gathered in Tunis on the first week of April 2019 to hold their Steering Committee to assess the evolution of the project and discuss about its future. In the context of this official project’s meeting, the partners organised two key events with the objectives to build capacity and to set up a Living Lab in the North-West region of Tunisia:
- The Basic & Cross-cutting Multidisciplinary Trainings; and
- Workshop on the Tunisian Farm Advisory System and FASTER Living Lab
Watch the video summary of the week and find more information below
The Basic & Cross-cutting Multidisciplinary Trainings: 2-4 April 2019
FASTER, in collaboration with The Node for Opportunities, Development and Environment organised targeted multidisciplinary trainings and capacity-building on various cross-cutting key topics, at the heart of European and international agenda. This included key aspects, knowledge, processes, as well as the capacities’ development of key-selected staff in understanding, managing and operating at international standards levels.
The courses were hold on two days aiming at two different target groups.
1. Decision-makers ( Policy makers, Managers and Research Coordinators) with a focus on “Leadership, innovation and effective decision-making for international cooperation”, a 3-hours training by Tomas Matraia.
2. Researchers (Senior Researchers; Team/Area Leaders; Young Talents) with 15 hours of courses covering various topics:
- Forests for the XXI century: CREAF’s strategy and institutional relationships – J. Pino
- Outreach, marketing and bio-based economy – S. Albertini
- Responsible Research and Innovation – R.Miskuf
- Innovation systems and internationalization – Prof. M. Kahn
- Innovative education and learning solutions for SDGs, researchers, local communities and farmers – Y. Frenski
These aspects are assumed to be a first step advantageous to further developing research excellence and harvest its benefits for the public and private sector.
The participation to the training was opened to the institutional members of INRGREF and to the wider Tunisian research community.
About 200 people participated in the courses with a high level of satisfaction – more than 85% of the participants evaluated their degree of interest in the topics presented as “High” or “Very High”.
To learn more about the training, download the full agenda and learn about the trainers, click here
Workshop on the Tunisian Farm Advisory System and FASTER Living Lab: 2 April 2019
The FASTER project has amongst its objectives to set up one Living Lab in order to test specific Farm Advisory System solutions targeting the complete series of actors in the farming chain in the North-West region of Tunisia.
After a first workshop organized on January 9th, FASTER held a second one on April 2nd to discuss the barriers and opportunities to FAS that the project should tackle.
Thirthy-four participants, including integrating members of the FASTER consortium, collaborators from AVFA (administration, technicians and trainers), INRGREF (researchers related to adaptation to climate change, water, soil, forestry and agriculture) and key actors in FAS system, joined the discussion in smaller groups.
This analysis and the interests of participants to tackle specific aspects will be the basis for the FASTER Living Lab protocol and activities to be developed in 2020 and 2021.
To learn more about the FASTER Living Lab and its objectives, click here
Next step of the capacity building process: Research excellence tools training – October 2019
The second step of the Capacity building stage of the project FASTER will take place in October 2019 with a set of Research Excellence tools trainings to provide the necessary knowledge and tools to increase research performance indicators.
The target of this course will be researchers, mainly from INRGREF and IRESA, as well as representatives from associated institutions, engineers, and specific experts from extension services that could benefit from the course contents.
More information to be provided soon.
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