european projects

The two-years learning partnership project ETRUST comes to a close and on this occassion I would like to reflect on what we did and learned.

The project aimed to improve the well-being and safety of migrant workers by encouraging employers to use effective e-learning content as part of a blended training approach to Health and Safety. We started with researching the laws and regulations of H&S trainings in our countries and Europe. Partners identified and evaluated e-learning content and tools that support Health and Safety training. On that basis, we analysed them and compared these on a European level. This led us to an insight to the situation of e-learning for H&S trainings and the rules of this market.

As the first year of the places2b project ends in few weeks, it's time to summarize a bit what we have done and achieved so far.

We at cocoate.com aimed to start building a network of local actors and association as the basis for a common development of our village. The first talks with the biggest association in Fitou, VHV, were promising but when it came to binding actions, they quit. So we started from the scratch, distributed project information in the village, made some public presentations and we got an amazing group of people which are enjoying to explore and share and start such a community process in our village.

I was writing some project applications for educational projects in the last weeks. Its hard work and I could not have manage that without exchanging my ideas with Isabell and Hagen, without their feedback and support. There are always some tricky points in such applications and you have to answer, amongst others, how you will sustain the envisaged impact of the project beyond its lifetime. This is tight connected to the methodology you will use to achieve the aims of a certain project. The following generalized summary mirrors the main points of what I have written for different projects. These points might be not really spectacular, in project reality often difficult to follow , but essential to sustain the impact and for further development.

We started another European project a few weeks ago, it's about old houses. Everyone who knows me probably smiles now, because I love old houses!

This is one reason why we, Isabell and me, wrote a project proposal and applied for funding. Another reason is, that old houses are witnesses of our culture, of our identity, but in our world they are outnumbered, often not respected, going to be destroyed to make place for modern houses.

In some countries, mostly in not so developed ones, a new house is also often a status symbol.

Also, in not so few countries you will rather receive a loan for building/buying a new house than buying/restoring an old one.

The last weeks were very busy with project meetings.

All together, we hosted four meetings here in Fitou:

• the Etrust project group
• a smaller group which came together to write a new project proposal
• the kick-off meeting for places2b
• the final meeting for the doing2learn project.

In particular I would like to mention the places2b project meeting as this was the start of a two years project with the aim to write a regional tourist guide and initializing discussion round tables about the development of tourism in our region. We had the opportunity to introduce our aims to local stakeholders from the Fitou administration board. All were very interested in participating and supporting the project idea and I really hope that we will be able to involve many Fitounais in this project to make it to an exceptional experience for everybody.

Due to fast globalization and the possibility to get to every place in the world in less time, people want to have authentic and individualized experiences while spending their spare time. The preservation and promotion of their landscape and culture for developing sustainable touristic structures will be important for European regions and its embedded local areas. That can also be a chance for supporting the diversification of regional economies.

European institutions from France, Italy, Wales, Turkey and Greece are partners in that two years project. They all have in common that they are situated in rural regions with growing tourism.
cocoate.com from France coordinates all activities.