Unlocking eSignature Licitness for Higher Education in European Union

How to eSign a document: e-signature licitness for Higher Education in European Union

morning everyone i'm just waiting for the numbers there down below to uh trickle up so i'll kick off in just a second i just want to make sure that we have as many bombs on seats so that's starting to look healthy so i'll just kick off my name is schneider very welcome to this morning's webinar i'm just going to briefly run through quick housekeeping and then i will hand you over to emma murta and who will be delivering the presentation this morning so you'll notice that you've come into a zoom webinar as opposed to a zoom meeting which you might be a little bit more familiar with so if you're looking to find where your microphone and your camera are we you don't actually have access to them in the webinar and all of the attendees are on mute and all the cameras are off for our attendees as well and we have quite big numbers of these weekly webinars so it just helps to reduce the distractions so you can sit back relax and enjoy you can take some notes and and you'll have uh notice down the bottom of the screen there there's two options to communicate with us here so if you're having any technical issues or any kind of questions about the event itself you can pop that into the chat box so that's the the one that we're more familiar with i suppose with just the one speech bubble there and you can pop in anything to the panel and i can give you a hand or my golly christina can give you a hand as well so that's kind of anything to do with zoom or the event um and then if you've got questions on the content you can pop those into the q a which is the selection there that has the two little speech bubbles beside it and so it looks slightly different to the chat but it's just easier if we're getting in a lot of questions and it's much easier to kind of have a look and categorize them for us so we'll ask you to keep content questions out of the chat and just keep them in the q a i really appreciate that thank you so much and you'll notice and that we are recording this morning so i will send around a copy of the recording or a link to the recording of your pardon and a copy of uh the slides that emmy uses today and i will send those around along with any resources uh that we mentioned uh we'll make sure to keep a list of those and i will email those around afterwards so if you miss any portion of the event um don't panic um i will send around a copy of the recording and you can catch up in your own time and i think that is all from me for now so enjoy the webinar and i will hand over to emma marta thank you great thank you very much janae just bear with me everybody for a second while i share my screen maybe christina can you give me a thumbs up if you can see my slide there see nice i can see your camera excellent okay i'm gonna make you disappear now so i can see my slides fully excellent so listen and good morning everybody um and thanks very much for coming along to this session and my name is i'm just gonna skip forward to the next slide hold on one second so yeah my name is emma mirta i'm the european programs manager here at the wheel um and i oversee all aspects of eu programs including our eu policy work and the european development of the wheel itself um but importantly for today's session we also oversee um a support and capacity building program for the sector around eu funding and so that kind of brings me on to my next point which is access europe so uh this event is brought to you by access europe and it's a three-year program it's support and capacity building for all our civil society organizations on how to better access eu funds and engage in eu policy it's run by the wheel and it's funded by the department of foreign affairs and there's um some links there in terms of our website for all kinds of information and definitely if you're on twitter make sure to follow us because it's more kind of quick updates on twitter and and i'm going to explain more about this program later and what's on offer through it but i just wanted to mention it here because before we get too deep into the european programs and you know maybe you're starting to feel like oh gosh this is a bit overwhelming it's just to reassure you that there is a program in place to offer support so don't worry um and there's lots of advice available so try today to just um absorb as much as you can and know that access europe is there for kind of ongoing support so um before i get stuck in i also just wanted to do some kind of general housekeeping um so this session is being recorded as sinead said and you will receive that recording along with slides and any of the other resources so there's no need to worry about trying to jot everything down um there is a lot of information in these slides um and i was kind of worried about that as let's put them together it's like oh gosh this is going to be too much but i suppose just try and kind of listen out for those programs that you think might be especially important for your organization and jot them down and then you can go back look at the recording or reach out to access europe for more support on that so um yeah don't worry about trying to get down all of this information uh also um i think she had mentioned this but i won't be able to see the q a box as i'm presenting um but do feel free to post questions anyway because i've asked my colleague christina who you might have seen when we logged in there she was on screen um i've asked her she's one of our european programs officers and she's going to monitor the q a and try to answer questions as we go and i'll try and allow a little bit of time at the end as well to get any questions but you can also just reach out directly to us with any questions that you might have and another caveat here is that there are and many many eu programs as you will see and our role at access europe really is to just kind of have a general overview and an understanding of each so that we can sign post people effectively and provide those kind of wrap-around supports we're not experts on every single intricacy of every single program and really that's the responsibility of the individual national contact points and agencies so throughout the presentation you hear me talk about that each funding uh that each program has a national contact point or an agency in the eu that's responsible for it so they're the experts on the program and we're just there to try and help um civil society organizations um start to navigate the overall kind of landscape of eu funding before diving into any specific fund so you'll notice that what i'm talking about today is pretty kind of high level and with that i did just want to check and see um where people were kind of capacity wise and experience wise with eu funded projects so schneid let me know if i need to stop sharing here but i know that you might have a poll set up to ask this question and it's just kind of a simple yes no question of have you been involved in eu programs before so um i can see that it's up there on the screen i don't think i can what people are voting don't worry emma that's good okay perfect i couldn't say i'll just wait until we're at about night perfect perfect that's fine so just the reason i'm asking this is because for some of you you might have been very involved in the last batch of programs which was 2014 to 2020 and you're looking to see you know what's changed in the meantime and you know what's what's happening with this new framework of programs and and for others it'll be they'll be completely new to ease under programs and learning about for the first time so i just wanted to see um what the experience level was like so here we go so yeah so um we have about 43 percent say yes they have been involved in eu funded programs and and 57 say no so like it's a relatively balanced it's as expected i think and so that's good and if you have updates or interesting projects or ideas or things you want to share feel free to put them in the chat as well um and everybody kind of keep an eye on that and see if there's anything interesting about your own e-funded projects or what you've done or things that you found helpful so we can we can share our combined expertise here so great let's have a look at the agenda so um in terms of what we've covered today i'm going to do a very brief look at how eu funding works and basically how the budget works and where it comes from and all that and and then for the overview for each program i've tried to do kind of a general description of the program itself kind of themes priorities the basic structure and then for several of them i have examples of projects that have been funded through that type of funding before and and then my last thing on each of them is just some some helpful links and then um whoever the the national contact point or the the eu agency in charge of it is and that's where you can go to get kind of more information from it or you can come to access europe but you might want to link indirectly with uh whoever the contact point is and so as i said it is a lot to try and take in so don't worry uh just listen to the programs that are relevant to you and we'll also then go through the supports available in a little bit more detail later on so let's jump into how ease funding works and this isn't going to be in huge detail but i think it is useful to know things like certain terminology like the multi the multi-annual financial framework so um you might have heard this before it's the multi-annual financial framework or mff and you often hear this spoken about in terms of the funding but basically it's the eu's long-term budget so it runs ing to seven year cycles and and it's where they determine what their goals are going to be for those that seven year period and how they are going to allocate funding to achieve those goals so i suppose importantly right now we are in a transition period the mff has just wound down last year and even into the first quarter of this year you were seeing those kind of last programs winding down and while the new mff the 2021 to 2027 one uh is just getting underway so it was significantly delayed we were supposed to be having programs at the beginning of this year and really they've only come out in the last two or three months um so there was there was big delays and even some of them you know we're still kind of waiting for them to be approved and you'll see that as we start looking at the programs um and i suppose you know that was we can give them a break soon as 2020 was quite a year uh with the pandemic and with brexit and obviously there was also political delays as well um due to kind of negotiations with certain member states so um you know we we are still in kind of a bit of a gray area but uh many programs have been released though and so there's lots to there's definitely lots to get started with and it does mean i suppose joining at this point if you're new to eu programs and you're just learning about it it is kind of an awkward time in in one sense because you know everybody's very confused um you know the contact points are confused the commission is confused we're definitely confused just trying to navigate all of these new programs and wrap our heads around new processes and new systems and all of that and however on the other hand it's a great time to get involved because you know if you're getting involved in your programs for the first time because this is a brand new set of programs and it's going to be around for a full seven years so by investing time now into learning about them and learning how to navigate them you know you're you're maximizing the number of opportunities you'll be able to avail of and per funding and you're getting to know you know you're going to get the most out of this um out of this program for the for the time you invest in learning about it um so this year just on the whole back to the mff this year not only do we have what's going to be the biggest and best mff ever in terms of the amount of funding that's available we also have three additional budget lines uh there's the next generation eu fund and you might have heard this kind of thrown around a bit also the recovery and resilience facility you might have heard of that because there was a public consultation on it not that long ago and there's also the 5 billion euro brexit adjustment reserve fund and again you might have heard that i think it was in the irish independent yesterday that ireland is getting 25 of that fund so we're going to be eligible for one billion euro of that fund which i think really reflects that this is this fund is all about um uh supporting those member states who are most impacted by brexit to transition and to to recover i suppose post brexit and and try to alleviate some of the issues that might have been caused and the fact that 25 of it is going to ireland i suppose really demonstrates that it's understood but a lot of that impact is going to be felt here um so in terms of just what it looks like you'll see the usual mff is here in blue so that's what would have been uh invested anyway uh in in this 2021 to 2027 mff but in addition there's also this extra 750 billion which is the the next generation eu package and that uncover that includes the coven 19 recovery package it's got 390 billion of grants and 360 billion of loans as well so this is you know you can see here it's a huge amount of money um and i suppose in terms of okay so how is this being spent um and how is it being distributed through various programs so let's just have a look at that just very briefly and it's not dissimilar to how you know funding is done here in ireland either um but just to briefly explain so you know funding programs always start with policy so a policy or policy objectives are set and from there a funding program is created and these funding programs are often called financial instruments because they're the instrument that is going to deliver on the policy um and from the programs these financial instruments you get projects um and the programs will usually uh publish their work program or their their annual program at the beginning of every mff and then every year they'll kind of renew it and update it through these like annual work programs and that just means that you know the priorities that were set in 2021 aren't rigid throughout the whole mff it means that it can respond and it can you know reflect what's going on and what are the pressing issues so it allows it to be constantly kind of updated and agile and and from you know these projects i suppose the the projects that are funded through these programs the idea is that they deliver on the policy they deliver on those policy objectives that were set and and in fact you know many projects then feed into how new policy is created because the impact and the findings of those projects informs future policy making so i suppose you can kind of see it as a circular thing like that and but it's it's always it makes sense if you're if you're ever writing european projects obviously you're going to link your project very closely to the program priorities and that is very important um but you also kind of want to demonstrate that you're linking it back to policy because that's really where it all starts and then one other note just on uh kind of background before we look at the programs um or the characteristics of eu funding is what's next but i do just want to have a quick note of um you know budgets might seem high but keep it in perspective when you look at these these figures it can seem like it's just an endless amount of money but i suppose don't get too excited and obviously it's across 27 member states now um and but also like a huge portion of it is going to be um absorbed by governments and by large-scale projects like infrastructure projects policy reform things like that um however i suppose on a on a positive note for civil society the eu are pushing for for more and more citizen and civil society involvement in eu projects and programs and certainly this is something that the wheel has been campaigning very hard for that in as much as possible portions of budgets are ring fenced for the sector and that the sector is supported to better access eu funding and i suppose that's where access europe itself came from we had you know as i said i'll tell you a bit more about it later but we had identified that there was this real capacity issue that needed to be addressed we campaigned hard for this program for for over two years and and now it's a reality so we're going to keep pushing that as much funding as possible is is allocated to towards civil society or involves civil society in some way and so one other quick note on the characteristics of eu funding um so i just wanted to say this i suppose this is more like expectation setting again before we get into the details of the programs just to get an idea of what's actually possible through these so you'll see that if what are your funding is i suppose it's an opportunity to learn and to share to connect with and influence policy as i kind of demonstrated earlier and a lot of it is about being innovative and developing new things and it's an opportunity to fast-track objectives so if you have a specific strategic objective you can get this like an injection of funding that will help you to fast track it and most eu funding is partnership based there are exceptions and we look at that but um most of it is partnership based so it is an opportunity to collaborate with partners and it's also a great opportunity to build your capacity and your organizational profile and so that's this was what it is but what it's not is just this is the expectation session piece it's not quick so if you're thinking i have you know we really need to fill a funding gap by the end of the year or we really need funding for an event or for an initiative that's kicking off you know later on this year that's probably not going to happen you you operate on around their deadlines and um it usually takes a a an amount of kind of strategy and development and planning and learning before you can ever kind of really engage in it so it is it's important to see it as kind of an investment into your organization's future and that you're investing into capacity building so that you can that once you do that once you do that investment and you kind of crack it and you learn how to do it it's potentially a continuous and very lucrative source of funding um but there is a bit of a investment up front and it's not quick and i suppose similarly it's not easy as i said there's a big learning curve involved but that doesn't mean it's not worth it because it is a quite lucrative source of funding once you learn how to do it it's also not without risk um this is just you know most of the time eu funding is project based and projects are risky they're inherently risky that's why we call them projects and not operational funding so there's no way to completely eliminate the risk of taking on a project whether it's eu funded or otherwise but there are things you can do to reduce the level of risk and that's again where something like access europe can help to advise you it's about you know designing your project well picking partners well all that kind of stuff so we can help with that but it is you know you have to be willing to take on a certain amount of risk and then the last two notes are kind of mostly so in general eu funding is not core funding um there are some exceptions and i mean like a handful of um exceptions where it's possible to get like operating grants which are essentially core funding but um in general no it's it's not it's project-based funding and i know this isn't ideal for a lot of organizations but that is the way it operates um um and also national funding now there are exceptions to this and we're going to look into them there's things like esf and leader but by and large most um eu funding does require some level of eu partnership particularly the more entry level programs and so that is something that you have to be aware of that um it usually involves collaborating with partners and usually those partners have to be in various member states so that's something to consider so look with that we're going to have a look at the programs and what i've done here is i've created a table where on one side you see 2014 to 2020 so that was the last mfs that some of you the the ones that are have been involved in your projects before might be familiar with this is the one that we we got to know over those seven years um and now there's the new mfs of the 2021 to 2027. so um this is how i tried to kind of lay them out and and we go through and look at them and look at okay what was the previous program and what's changed in this new program and then once i go over them i will have a closer look look then at the actual programs itself themselves and we'll go through each of them and just kind of have a very short summary of them like i said i've just kind of done short summary and some themes structure and then uh i have a good few examples as well of projects that have been funded so starting at the top there many of you might have heard of horizon 2020 this was the huge research and development funding program at the time for that mff it was the biggest ever and but now it's even bigger and it's become horizon europe uh so that one's easy it just kind of changed names but it's essentially the same thing but just with an awful lot more funding behind it and then there's also again lots of you'll be familiar with the european social fund and so that's a national program that's distributed nationally through um the irish government and and for uh the last framework that was called the european social fund for this one it's being called esf plus and whenever you see a plus on a european program that means that it's absorbed another program so um the european social fund has absorbed the smaller program the eu program for employment and social innovation or easy and so now it's become esf plus and that means that it will include a strand on on this employment and social innovation and that's especially relevant to the sector because a lot of that social innovation funding is kind of aimed at the civil sector as a whole but especially kind of social enterprise um there's also then the rights of policy and citizenship program which many of you might be familiar with from 2014 to 2020 and you're for citizens as well which again you might be familiar with because the wheel was the contact point for york for citizens for the the last msf well both of those programs are no more um they've been combined and they're going to form a new program called citizenship equality rights values or serve and the agreement is in place for that there's some funding calls out now so we link to them uh they're linked further down in the presentation but um yes so this is now a bigger overarching program with again a lot more funding behind it so we'll have a little bit more look into that the justice program is the same it's just continued under the name justice with a bit more funding erasmus plus is the same um but uh it's got a few addition more additional features but it's staying under the brand erasmus plus and it's also almost doubled its budget so that's a that's a big one and it's a very lucrative one for our sector so again we'll have a little look into that more there's the european solidarity core this was a relatively new fund even for the last framework it actually came along in around 2018 so it was only just kind of finding its feet in the last mff and this will be its its first full mff and again we're going to have a look at all of these in a bit more detail later on but just going on then again lots of you'll be familiar with leader particularly in rural communities um so leader will continue but the full program has been delayed until 2023 so at the moment there's a transitional leader program in place and there's about 70 million euro allocated to that for the life program this was the environmental kind of climate action program that's been continued with more funding the same with the uh the amif the asylum migration and integration fund that's being continued with more funding there's various interreg programs that uh ireland is eligible for inter-rigger inter-regional programs they're regions that are kind of drawn up around europe and that have some kind of shared features whether it's um you know kind of shared maritime culture or industries or you know whatever there's lots of different um examples of them and these mainly focus on regional development and sustainability and job creation and things like that and so ireland is in several different inter-regional programs but um they're going undergoing a kind of full consultation process this year and they won't actually be out until january 2022 so it's kind of watch this space for those ones again lots of people will be familiar with the piece four program so piece four was the fourth of the peace programs and that was the one that ran from 2014 to 2020. um well in this program it's going to be called peace plus and we know what plus plus means in a european program because i mentioned it plus means it's absorbed in other programs so it's actually absorbed a smaller interact program so not only is it a bigger and better peace program with a lot more funding than ever before it's also got kind of an inter-red component to it now as well and there's the health program that was actually the third health program was the one that we were on in the last nff now that's been called eu for health uh so it's brand new and it's it's a huge investment area this year obviously after the pandemic it's become a massive focus um there's creative europe anybody in the in the arts or culture fields will certainly be familiar with that and and that's been continued with increased funding so there's no branding change or anything like that for that one and then there are a few different new programs but the two that i thought were kind of relevant to civil society that i just wanted to mention were the digital europe program and the just transition program so they're brand new in this mff and we will have a brief look at them later so let me just see where we are for time okay we're going to jump right into horizon europe and this is the first program and as you remember in in the last msf it was called horizon 2020 and now it's horizon europe so what can we look forward to or what what what are we in for in this new mff so it's still the eu's key funding uh program for research and innovation uh this time the budget is 95.5 billion so just a massive program and it tackles climate change the sdgs and it's there to kind of boost eu's the eu's competitiveness and growth so there's these kind of three themes um that that you can kind of roughly divided into there's science and technology and this is about fueling the eu's scientific and technological excellence and strengthening the european research area and then there's also the society the society theme and that's about tackling policy priorities including the green and digital transitions and the sdgs so that one's especially relevant to civil society and then there's also boosting europe's innovation uptake competitiveness and jobs there are kind of three themes but if you break it down into the structure you can see that it kind of fits within these three pillars um and then there's several different kind of clusters or actions or whatever you want to call them between it is a huge program like 95 billion euros so of course it's going to be a little bit complicated so i suppose the main pillar that obviously jumps out there that's relevant to our sector is pillar two that global challenges and european industrial competitiveness and that's not the only pillar i would just point out in pillar one you'll see these mary's security actions and these are relevant to civil society because this is about basically can fund a researcher from elsewhere in the in europe to come and work for a host organization and they get two years salary and they can work on a specific issue as long as it's aligned with the policy priorities of the marie curie program um and those host organizations can be charities they can be non-profit groups so this is essentially a way to fund a full-time researcher to work with you for up to a couple of years now they're extremely competitive programs but they're very lucrative and very interesting so it's not i wouldn't discount it and there's excellent support available through the irish universities association around accessing martial security funding and so that's i just wanted to give that one an honorable mention before i focus on pillar two which is the one that's really i suppose of interest to our sector because that's all about health culture creativity and inclusive society civil security for society digital industry and space well climate energy mobility food bioeconomy natural resources agriculture environment so all of those things i mean i'm sure they're kind of jumping out of people here and thinking that okay that might be relevant to my organization and pillar three not so much relevant but you can see it there and then there's kind of this overall priority of widening participation and spreading excellence and reforming and enhancing the european research and innovation system so that's basically how it's structured and i suppose uh you know i said i wanted to try and find an example of of each type of funding and like horizon is such a huge program you could think of about a million examples but i did i did just want to um one second now where am i i did just want to kind of highlight this one and i chose this example i'm going to go through it now in a minute because i think it really illustrates engaged research and and that's the opportunity for our sector here so if you're not familiar with the term engaged research it's basically that whole spirit of nothing about us without us that if there's going to be research or uh development done in relation to a specific um societal challenge so for example if you're creating a new technology for people um for for cancer patients or you're inventing a new drug for diabetes or whatever that people the people experiencing that issue or even if it's something to alleviate poverty or if it's something to do with culture or if it's something to do with refugees or whatever it is that it should involve closely the people who are the subject of that research and and that's the basic idea of of engaged research there's a lot more if you go to the website campusengage.i.e there's much more eloquent explanations of it there but that's that's essentially it and this is really the opportunity for our sector because for the vast majority of organizations in our sector the idea of leading a horizon application is not really possible they are massive and ridiculously competitive and they usually have to involve a huge range of partners from multiple sectors they have to be really detailed in terms of the science the research and innovative kind of value of the proposal so they're really essentially geared towards university research institutes industry all that kind of thing however there is a role for our sector to play and that's by partnering with those research institutes with those universities and so that they can be the social partner in the project providing ethical access to target groups for piloting for consultation and providing their expertise i mean we as a sector have incredible expertise and insight into these societal challenges on the ground and that can be of huge value to informing research and so that's really it's about kind of forging relationships with more researchers and scientists who are going to be applying for these funds and and trying to find a role for yourself in those kind of projects and this is an example of one so that was a long preamble to get into this which is uh this is a nice example of a horizon plus or a horizon uh europe uh project i'm getting mixed up with my pluses and my 2020s and all that um so it's reinvest investing in the right to a home and it's was looking at housing hap and family hubs and so this research focused on the experience of lone parents living in emergency accommodation homelessness accommodation in ireland and it was part of the europe-wide horizon 2020 funded re-invest project investigating the societal challenge of under-investment in social services and and trends in social sectors and so it involved qualitative research with peer researchers and a group of families in a family hub a homeless family hub in dublin over a 10-week period and introducing them to the idea of the right of to housing and co-producing new insights into the impact of hap and the family hub emergency accommodation model and it also involved interviewing key housing and homelessness policy experts and practitioners the research partner was manute university and the charity partner was focus ireland and as i said it was funded by horizon in 2020. so that's an example of where researchers and civil society can work together um on on these types of applications so it doesn't need to be cut off from our sector in terms of national contact points um it did the program itself was launched in ireland last year so you can actually watch the full event i'd really recommend it it's linked there on youtube and there's there's a dedicated website dot ie for ireland but enterprise ireland are the kind of overarching contact point for uh for horizon europe there are probably about a dozen individual contact points for all the various strands and components and actually you can see them on the commission listing here but enterprise ireland is kind of the hub bringing them all together so it's worth kind of contacting them if you're interested in that um so just moving on to the european social fund um so as i said this combines the the european social fund with the easy the program for employment and social innovation to become esf plus or european social fund plus um so it's the eu's main instrument for investing in people with the aim of building a more social and inclusive europe and it finances the implementation of the principles from the european pillar of social rights the priorities are creating and protecting job opportunities promoting social inclusion fighting poverty and developing the skills needed for digital and green transitions it also involves investing in young people and addressing child poverty and you can see there's a nice kind of graphic here that kind of outlines that there is a budget of 88 billion investing in young people support for the most vulnerable providing food and basic material assistance investing in children and promoting social innovation so they're the kind of key areas of it and you can see kind of a structure of it here so uh under right under european social fun plus you can see the more traditional one of the esf from the last one which was all around employment education and social inclusion but this time it's also going to absorb this feed program which some of you might know because i know a lot of charities are involved in that feed program it's administered through the government as far as i know and it's support for the most deprived this is food support materials existence for um for the most equipped in our communities there's also the investment in eu or in youth initiative and then there's this priority action experimentation easy and this is the one that i think will be really important for our sector as i said it's all around social innovation it's a brand new area i think there's going to be some funding opportunities there for our sector there's also health which is across most programs these because of cold virtual health has become this kind of overarching priority that's been slotted into lots of uh lots of programs now the reason i kind of highlighted that easy strat is because a lot of the time the more traditional esf funding like in the last program in the last mff i should say um ended up being largely absorbed by government so this is what funded the the etbs and things like youth reach and you'd see like the esf uh logo on a lot of kind of government social initiatives and so there wasn't a whole lot that trickled down to civil society so i'm hopeful that in this new mfs and in esf plus we'll see a bit more funding for civil society through that easy strand and however even though there wasn't very many civil society examples i did find a really nice one of an example of an esf project from the last framework just to give you an indication of the types of projects that might be funded in this new framework and so this was the program was called employment for people from immigrant communities or the epic program it was delivered by business in the community ireland which is a movement for sustainable change in business that inspires and enables businesses to bring about a sustainable low-carbon economy and more inclusive society where everyone thrives so their initiative epic provides specialized support for migrants and refugees to help them integrate into irish society it was just over 1.9 million i think this was over yeah it was over four years um and it was under the esf program specifically employment inclusion and learning and uh katrina from business in community was not only kind enough to let me feature her project but also sent me on these fantastic pictures that they had of their most recent um zoom adapted class or covert adapter class and and also a a epic graduation class from back in the good old kind of pre-chromebook days so that was very nice and it's been an incredibly impactful program three and a half thousand people have participated 101 nationalities and 68 of them have found jobs or in training or volunteering so that's a really nice example of the types of projects that might be funded in this new program for contact points and the esf managing authority is in the department is now in it's moved from the department of education to the department of further and higher education research innovation and science there's an email address for it there and they also have an excellent website that outlines not just esf funding but all kinds of eu funding so that's that's really worth checking out so the next one is serve so i think i mentioned this this was it used to be the right equality and citizenship program and the york for citizens program and then it's been absorbed together into serve so yeah it combines those two previous programs with a budget of just over 1.5 billion and for this mff service the biggest ever eu funding program for promoting and protecting fundamental rights rule of law and democracy inside the eu and this one is really important for our sector there's so much flexibility to it it's tailor-made for civil society that's what it's really all about and so it's this is something that's really worth looking into and there are open calls right now and and there'll hopefully be lots more calls over the coming years there will be because there's more funding but um we're hopeful still a more diverse and interesting calls and so just have a look at what it looks like this was the primary objective is to protect and promote rights and values as enshrined in the treaties and in particular by supporting civil society organizations and in order to sustain open um democratic and inclusive societies and it kind of roughly um breaks down into three strands there's actually another strand which is about values but it yeah it more or less sits within this equality and right strand so you can see what happened that rac became this strand the right equality citizenship program became this equality and rights strand the york for citizens program became this citizenship engagement and participation strand and so the types of projects that would have been funded under rec are now going to be funded um under that equality and rights strand the types of projects that were funded under europe for citizens are now going to be funded under this citizenship citizens engagement and participation strand and then there's the daphne strand and anybody who's been around eu programs for a while would probably have heard of daffy and it's been around for ages and it's in various programs it's been passed between justice between rec and various other programs but now it's found its home in in serve which is great um and it's all around the program itself is all around combating violence specifically violence against children and gender-based violence so this is a really you know appropriate and apt uh program for our sector specifically and well worth looking at and i just have a couple of examples this is a really nice project um that was funded under the previous rec program but it's an example of the types of projects that are going to be funded under serve and so this one is coordinated by unicef ireland i think everybody's familiar with unicef but it's the intergovernmental un agency working in over 190 countries and territories to save children's lives defend their rights and help them fulfill their potential from early childhood to adolescence so unicef ireland are the lead and they are partnering with various other unicef committees in austria france germany iceland netherlands and and portugal and the project is all about increasing awareness in key stakeholders about child rights supporting child rights schools to embed child participation and respect for children's rights and education and improving rights-based inclusive meaningful child participation and they're voiced in influence in the public sphere so that's a really nice project and an example of the type of thing that is going to be funded under serve and for more examples on the types of york for citizens was a great very accessible program particularly if you're new for for to european funding it was very easy and straightforward program and and so if you're interested in finding out more about you know and it will continue to be funded through the serve program it'll just be under that different banner so if you want to have a look more at the types of projects that were funded under europe for citizens to get an idea of what's in store for the serv program i'd really recommend you watch our um final conference that we did for europe for citizens because there's we we have speakers that that present their projects and there's an example of each type of funding that was available under europe for citizens so it's a really good way of kind of getting to know it national contact point so well first of all i would check just in terms of useful links check out the serve kind of page on the funding contenders portal and the calls that are open right now and the the program has moved it has gone to the department of children equality disability integration and youth so because of that move there has been no official uh contact point appointed yet so you have to just kind of watch this space at the moment and access europe can provide support for applications um but hopefully there will be a national contact point established soon um justice i'm only going to very briefly touch on this one because it's quite niche and but i didn't want to completely skip it um because it i suppose especially just looking at it here especially if you're working in the area of civil liberties or criminal rights or rights of victims it could be um could be relevant to you so just to quickly mention it it provides support uh it's funding to support judicial cooperation in civil and criminal matters for example training to legal practitioners and effective access to justice for citizens and businesses so for some of you for a select few it might be of relevance and it's all about strengthening democracy rule of law and fundamental rights and it's got a budget of 305 million it's centrally managed in brussels and there's no national contact point unfortunately there's no examples i went through the whole commission's um database of funded justice projects and i couldn't find one that was coordinated by ireland so maybe we'll change that in this new mff we'll see what happens um so i just wanted to mention it because there might be a handful of you that it that it could be uh interesting too so we're going to move on to horizons plus then from the niche to the very very broad because this one is probably the most um diverse one and for and and the most kind of flexible one for our sector um so earlier on i mentioned that if there's a plus in um an eu program it's because it absorbed another program and while erasmus didn't absorb any programs in this mff in the last one it absorbed many of them um so there used to be several different programs for education training youth sport all of those lots of programs so there was the erasmus program which everybody knows from university and student exchange so that was fine but there's also other ones and those who've been involved in your programs might know one's like leonardo da vinci program which i think is about entrepreneurship there was a lifelong learning program it was about lifelong learning it was a grunting big program that i can't remember what that was about um there was a sport program there was a youth in action program there was loads of small programs and basically once the 2014 mff came around they decided to create this massive education training youth and sport program called erasmus plus as in erasmus which was the biggest of all those funding that the university won plus all the others now unfortunately it did create a bit of confusion because a lot of times you can see erasmus and kind of uh dismiss it because they think oh that's just for universities but that is not the case and it is absolutely much broader than that and we have a look into that just keep an eye on the time okay so it's got an estimated budget of 26.2 billion uh nearly double the last mff um the 2021 program to 2027 focuses on social inclusion the green and digital transition promoting youth participation democratic life and it's also about supporting the european pillar of social rights implementing the eu youth strategy and and developing european dimension in sports that's a very broad overview of a huge program so it offers mobility and mobilities are kind of projects that involve travel and and uh learning abroad and linking in with others abroad it can be student travel but it can also be mobilities and volunteers of staff all kinds of things and so mobility is just you speak for these kind of study trip type things um there's also cooperation opportunities so there's higher education which we all know and kind of associate with the risen clubs doesn't really apply to our sector there's also the vat which or for patient education training this does apply to our sector because it includes training for staff and protection practitioners so if you're working with um professionals in any sense um you know and training professionals whether they're teachers or social workers or carers or whatever it is um this could be applicable to you um the wheel uses it has gotten funding through this because we developed training for the sector for professionals within the sector through this funding school education doesn't really apply to our sector because it's mainly focused at schools but if you work very closely with schools if you work with primary school students or offer programs to transition year or something like that it could be relevant and adult education is another one um for this lecture that's that's very kind of lucrative because this involves any kind of education of individuals they don't have to be professionals like in the vet side of things adult education you know even if you don't identify as an adult education organization and if you're engaging in in education in some way you can you can apply so for example if you're a homelessness organization and you're working with a group of homeless people and you want to develop develop a course around soft skills or independent skills or independent living or something like that and you want to develop something new and innovative that would address that need and it's based in education then that qualifies if you work with older people and you want to develop something around healthy living and active aging like a new technology or something that would kind of educate people then that qualifies so even if you don't consider yourself an adult education organization you can still be eligible to apply as long as your project is rooted in education and as long as it's um you know closely aligned with the program priorities which are very broad so um you know that's really worth considering don't dismiss it just because you think oh we're not an educational organization so that doesn't apply to us because that's not the case um youth and sport obviously hugely relevant to our sector if you work in those areas you need to be looking at a resource plus it's a huge source of funding and the great thing about it is that it's predictable they have predictable deadlines every year um and you know you can plan and and gradually build your capacity you're not just waiting for random calls to come out which can sometimes be the case with the other programs an example here um oh i realized i missed a slide okay so an example here is um uh the scope project so this is shameless self-promotion this was a wheel project uh it began in 2018 but uh it involved irish partners the wheel and then we also partnered with one facade and partners then from scotland finland latvia estonia um and we developed an online learning platform learning content and a validation system and it was all about kind of recognizing sector skills and providing accessible learning opportunities so we created modules on the basics of governance fundraising financial management communications and risk management and they're all free and available and they're still there and you're welcome to use them but that's an example of an erasmus plus project that was vet funded um okay so whoops so the national contact points so we're very lucky in ireland to have a really excellent uh national contact point for raisins plus lyricus many of you know them and they're uh they manage erasmus plus and also european solidarity core which i'm going to touch on now in a moment um but uh yeah they're a fantastic rise they're fantastic national agency incredibly helpful go above and beyond so definitely linking with them follow their newsletters uh go to their events and on that um they have all of these a few different kind of resources here that might be useful but they're also launching officially launching in ireland the new program the 21 21-27 program and that's next week on 22nd of june so definitely register for that for european solidarity corps okay we're flying through them um so this is a relatively new program it just came into existence in 2018 um and this is its first proper mff so it's uh over um 200 there's opportunities for 270 000 people and a huge budget behind it and for uh to bring together young people and organizations to build a more inclusive society support vulnerable people and respond to societal and humanitarian challenges and importantly there's opportunities to fund volunteering so you as a host organization hosting volunteers or sending organizations sending volunteers there's opportunities to develop projects around that and funding to be accessed and they can be national or international so that's really important if you're working closely with volunteers if you're a volunteer coordinator you need to be looking at this and there's a few different priorities there i'm not going to go into a huge amount of detail because we are kind of running out of time but it's all about empowering young people building inclusive democratic europe and sustainability and there's a lovely example here of an art in action project this was a um an eu solidarity core project and around working with children in direct provision and and it was all around kind of um expression through art making skills and if you get the chance to click on any links i would really recommend click on that link and watch the really nice videos and the artwork that the children produce because it's just such a lovely project and similarly not lyrics are the national contact point for this i've already sang their appraisals so definitely link in with them they're so relevant to our sectors so you really should be following what they're doing leader which many of you will be familiar with so if you work especially in rural areas you'll be familiar with leader so the aim of i mentioned that we're in a transitional fund right now because the 20 the proper leader model will be out into 2023 so 70 million has been allocated for royal communities and private enterprise for this more or less two-year period um it is going to build the capacity of communities that have not received leader funding before and respond to cope with 19 and it focuses on things like job creation fostering encouraging entrepreneurship and projects that support climate agenda digital transition and developing royal communities and again you can see those kind of themes popping up there so there's economic development social inclusion rural environment so you can have a closer look at that future and we also have these are some examples that my lovely colleague christina pulled together for me so we have multiple examples here so things like installation of small scale broadband equipment in one door and community center and lands bone heritage festival a digital space for children's artwork and writing restoration of wall garden in mount bello so lots of lovely examples and this is one of the rare examples of where you can actually get capital funding for developing properties and and resources and buying equipment you know buying you know developing a new community centre capital projects are quite rare in eu funding so this is one to look out for there um national contact points and links so there's the leader is managed by local action groups and so to find your local action group you just need to click that link and they're all listed there so definitely get in touch with them there's some really nice examples of leader projects there and the wheel has actually been running an introduction to leader funding series so we started on 25th of may with introduction and planning your leader project and we have one coming up next week on support for your leader project so if you're interested definitely register for that please do watch the the first two sessions if you haven't because um it kind of assumes that you you've done those ones already so life program this is the environment program and i know this is a lot of information don't worry we're coming down to the last few and so the live program is the eu's instrument for environment and climate action 5.4 million budget or billion budget i should say so 60 increase pretty huge and some of that is going to be on environmental projects and the rest is going to be climate action and we're expecting calls to be published in july so different themes our nature and biodiversity circular economy and quality of life climate mitigation and adaption and clean energy transition and we have an example here i couldn't find any examples of civil society but there is a nice example here of and the department of culture heritage and the goaltext who did this one around improving correct corn creek conservation status in ireland and it was a budget of 5 million it was all around enhancing both special protection areas and farmland so these tend to be large scale projects quite scientific but again we're looking more that future eu programs are going to be more geared towards citizen inclusion and civil society involvement so that what's happening at a high level kind of filters down to communities lots of links there in terms of the website the newsletter and then the contact point it sits within the department of environment climate and communications you can see the details there and there's also a email address another one asylum migration and integration fund so this is about strengthening the communist island policy and developing legal migration and supporting third country nationals to integrate and to be socially included and fighting a regular migration so it's a proposed budget of no over nine billion and this is usually distributed nationally through governments and it is usually through the department of justice and it's likely to be again we have an example of a project here that was um coordinated by galway city partnership and it was all around it was the bridge project and it was about effective delivery and reception of and integration supports to asylum seekers and and third country nationals living in galway city and county um and there was various different partners there and golden rural development city council hsc youth work ireland so that's a nice example of a project and again contact point is in the department of justice and there's lots more information on their page there the integrigs i already mentioned these and i won't go into too much detail because they're not going to be out until next year but and the idea of them is to help regional and local governments across europe to develop and deliver better policy uh it creates an environment and opportunities for sharing solutions and policy learning and it aims to ensure government's investment innovation and implementation efforts all lead to integrated and sustainable impact for people and places so ireland as i said is part of multiple interracial areas this is where we are they're in the kind of consultation process now then it goes to the commission and the idea is that by january 2022 we'll have a program there's a really nice example here from skull and social enterprise in galway and it's all about promoting community enterprise well-being and social inclusion and their project biz mentors provides free access to business expertise and wisdom for people and social enterprises and community groups that might otherwise not be able to access them and it was around 1.3 million euro funding for five partners over three years to develop this software that matches uh mentees with mentors and you can see it was co-funded by um the npa programme and those partners from finland iceland and northern ireland and your national contact point for that really is the the northwestern regional assembly um and um there's a contact details there so peace plus then as well um so peace plus lots of people will be aware of peace um so the peace program we were on the fourth iteration of the peace program but now we have peace plus which means it's absorbed the interreg va program and and it's it's gonna be the biggest one ever and it's about continuing to support uh activities that contribute towards a prosperous and stable society in northern ireland and the border counties of ireland including activities that promote peace and reconciliation and contribute to the cross-border economic and territorial development and you can see there's lots of different priorities there building peaceful and thriving communities delivering economic growth generation empowering young people healthy inclusive communities sustainability and embedding partnership and collaboration so in terms of the area there it is usually um uh kind of relegated to northern ireland and those border counties uh calvin de gaulle latrine laos monahan and sligo but um there is some flexibility there in terms of um if it's justified disposal in terms of bringing in partners from outside the core area and there's a nice example here of them um funding that was administered by early years northern ireland who actually collaborated with us on the first phase of access europe um and they they collaborated with the national childhood network and for mana trust around this project for preschool children and they were able to develop their kind of um digital learning offerings and get funding for laptops and webcams and broadband and everything and they got a hundred thousand sterling from the peace program towards that and the contact point for that is the seupb um and uh there's consultation reports and everything there so you can access there to learn more about that realistically that's going to be uh it's supposed to be coming later on this year but it probably would be early next year by the time we start seeing calls for that and i'm going to i'm aware that i'm coming up on time so i might have to skip the last couple of ones and see where i am and with the eu for health program this one is more or less new just to kind of uh broadly touch on it it's it's going to provide funding for eligible entities health organizations and ngos it's about 5.3 billion and there's some priorities there in terms of fostering health the union and protecting people from serious cross-border threats to health and improving medical projects are products devices and strengthening health systems and you can see that in terms of um priorities there's disease prevention crisis preparedness health systems and healthcare workforce digitalization and then the cross-cutting priority of mitigate or fighting cancer um so um it's under preparation and but actions will fall under those kind of strands and the national contact point again hasn't been um hasn't been appointed yet um but uh in the previous program it was at the health research board so it's likely that it's going to be the health research board again so there's a link to their website there i think the last one i'm going to do before i just very quickly and i know i'm going a couple of minutes over but don't worry um if you need to go don't worry we have the recording and but and it's just to kind of come back to access europe again but i just very quickly want to just touch on creative europe and so this is the um european commission's framework program for support of culture and audio visual sectors 2.44 billion and euro funding so if you work in the artistic or creative fields in any way you definitely want to be looking at this and it's about enhancing artistic and cultural cooperation at eu level encouraging competitiveness innovation and sustainability across the audio visual sector and promoting cut cross-sectoral innovation collaboration actions so there's um three strands there's this creative europe culture strand there's the media strand and then there's the cross sector strand so i won't go into detail about them there's um lots of different kind of opportunities under each of those strands no matter what area of the arts that you work in an example that was it was led by a scottish partner but it had irish partners the arc was this push project and it was about initiating new artistic ideas and performances that push us to take more risk as makers presenters and and to address underrepresentation of different groups on our stages and to tell stories that really connect with children and who they are so it funded things like a lab residencies festivals visits and again if you're interested in that one um you can contact the arts council uh they have the creative europe that's there they're the national contact point and they can answer all questions about creative europe and they also there is going to be also an online session later on next week i think on creative europe that might be of interest particularly on the culture strand so the other ones that i was going to mention but i'm not going to go into detail just because we're running out of time these are brand new programs so there is no detail on them there's the digital europe program um there's the just transition programs this is just digital europe is about digitalizing europe sectors and just transition is about um i suppose um facilitating the implementation of things like the green deal where nobody is left behind and there's re retraining and res and reskilling for people who might um have their their jobs affected by the just transitions so you can have a look at them in the follow-up slides if you're interested but they're brand new and there's very little information about them yet um so look that's been a whole slew of eu programs we are couple two minutes over i'm gonna finish off no more than two minutes from now because um then i'll have only kept you for an extra five minutes and i hope you forgive me for that there was a lot of them um but i hope there's been some useful ones and some ones that within that you've thought oh okay that's that's interesting for my organization i'll remember that and check back in because you have access europe there as a support and i really just wanted to kind of come back to that and emphasize that if anything within those those um programs piqued your interest and thought o