Online Signature Legitimateness for Teams in European Union

How to eSign a document: online signature legitimateness for teams in European Union

okay so it looks like so far the majority of people have not been involved in eu funder projects yet so hopefully this training will encourage you to dip your toes in and just go ahead and end the poll so yeah we've got 76 percent of people not yet involved in eu funded projects about eighteen percent been involved in a project or two and six percent been involved in many projects okay okay brilliant it's over to you emma great thank you so much emily and um thank you very much to er everybody that is here this morning and so just to introduce myself my name is emma marta i'm the european programs manager here at the wheel um and i will see all aspects of eu programs including our e-policy work and the european development of the wheel itself um but importantly our supports as well for the sector around accessing and managing eu funding and that's mainly through our program access europe which i should we we shared a short video about there and you can learn more about at accesseurop.i.e and so we're just going to have a quick look at what we're going to cover this morning and now just to warn you we did do a very similar training to this last year so just be aware that a lot of the materials that are going to be covered this morning uh were included in that last training there are a few editions and updates but it won't be entirely new content just to warn you about that um but today we're going to cover how does eu footline work so this is just a very general overview of how it all works you don't need to have a lot of information about you know where your funding comes from or how the budgets work or anything like that but it's useful to have kind of a an overview of it and we're also going to look at the new funding programs when you see new funding programs these are the ones that were released in um 2021 and we're going to look at what's new what are the priorities and uh what you know what updates have happened in the last uh in the la from from the previous budget period which ended in 2020 and then we'll have a look at um pathways so this is how if you're new to eu funding which i think about 75 of you are and how you can start your eat funding journey but then also for those of you who are a little bit more experienced how you might scale up or kind of refocus your eu funding strategy then we're going to have a look at the supports that are available um which is mainly the the various national contact points but also us then at access europe and just to note you know even though we've only got a few agenda items there there is a lot of information in this session so what we're going to try and do to make it as kind of friendly user-friendly as possible is to take multiple short breaks we're going to take little five-minute breaks throughout this morning session just to give your your eyes and your brain a bit of a break and give you a chance to get up and move a little bit because uh as i said it's a good bit of information to try and absorb on a wednesday morning so we'll try and make it as easy and as friendly for you as possible and then one more more note and it's going to be difficult how many people do we have now we have 98 people here this morning and i'm sure there'll be a few more that will join us so um it is difficult to facilitate a q a for this number of people and particularly when it comes to eu funding because it's quite a broad topic and uh you know it can get very detailed and the details of individual programs can get very niche and often the questions that people have are very specific to their organization and not necessarily you know a useful conversation for the whole group to be witness to so what we're going to do is my colleagues emily and christina are just going to keep an eye on the chat for any clarifying questions so if you have any questions and that you think that they could answer as we go in the chat just pop them in there and they'll do their best to answer everything if it's a more detailed question we just encourage you to reach out to us by email at europe at wheel.ie and um we'll be able to get back to you with a more tailored response at that point um that's specific to your needs obviously we we may well be inundated after this uh after this session so it might take us a few days to get back to you but we will get back to you so um that's our kind of solution rather than opening the floor to a q a which could get a little bit unwieldy with a group this size um so we're gonna get started and look at how eu funding works and i'm not going to go into exhaustive detail as i said you don't need to know a lot about how eu politics or policy works but it can be very helpful just to have a general idea so that um it can kind of help navigating the the landscape a little bit easier and also connecting the dots between eu policy and the programs so that you can make kind of stronger applications so the first thing we're going to look at is the multi-annual financial framework or the mff this is one of the first pieces of jargon people will usually encounter when they're starting with eu funding is you know the term mff is kind of thrown around a lot but it's basically the eu's long-term budget and it runs ing to seven years seven year cycle so i think i alluded earlier that the last one ended in 2020 and we are now in the 2021 to 2027 period of eu funding so even though it's a year in we're still kind of in a bit of a transition at the moment there were significant delays with the budget this time around because of probably covert and brexit and there was i know a lot of issues with some member states so it took what you know any time that it changes an mff it can be there's a lot of upheaval and there's a lot of newness to get used to but i think this time it took even longer than normal um however at this point most programs have been released um and we're even starting to see those ones that were delayed until 2021 they've even started to release updates and some deadlines now so that's really good and i suppose it's a really um it's really good timing because of that you know we're seeing more and more deadlines coming out and it's a good time in general just to get started to kind of get to grips with eu funding because the knowledge that you get now and the um kind of research that you do now and capacity building that you do now would serve you for seven years so that you know these programs are going to be around for seven years so it's a good time to invest in your uh your knowledge and capacity in this area so the good thing about this year as well is that number one we have this brand new uh mff but also it's the biggest um budget that we've ever had and we have the usual kind of mff budget that you get every year which was already increased was already bigger than any of the ones that we had before but in kind of tandem with that they've also made additional budget lines available this year that are kind of complementing the usual mff and so that includes next generation eu which is a kind of cool um it's related to covid and the need for i suppose kind of radical change of rethinking of our society and then there's also the recovery and resilience facility which is a lot more kind of practical loans and grants specifically in relation to recovery from covet and then another kind of budget line that is now available to ireland is ireland specifically um is the brexit adjustment reserve but we're getting one-fifth of that so this is to help member states that would be most impacted by brexit by brexit and you recover from it and so the fact that we're getting one-fifth of that i suppose demonstrates that there is an awareness that it is you know very much affecting ireland we haven't seen how that will be spent yet it's just been confirmed that we will be in receipt of that and so this is what the usual kind of mff looks like so you can see the usual budget there and then you know just to get the scale of it the proportion is that extra 750 billion and what a huge addition that makes to um the usual mff that we would have uh so a massive amount of money when you see it like that um and then i suppose just to kind of illustrate what i mentioned earlier that it's about um you know it's not necessarily that you have to understand all the eu policy but it can be handy just to understand how policies become funding programs so funding programs are kind of thematic so there's things like a funding program around education and our environment and international and we look at them in more detail very soon and but they're also referred to as these kind of financial instruments and they're there to push policy into action that's the purpose of funding programs each funding program will have a work program that it will publish annually it has an overall program for the whole seven years and then it kind of complements it by these work programs and updates it that allows it to be kind of flexible to what happens and what the needs are and how these things change and it sets things like priorities and conditions and timetables and all that kind of thing and and the programs are there to deliver on policy objectives so what you see there in that kind of little diagram is you can see that policy becomes programs which then fund projects and i suppose the opportunity is that a lot of projects you know the results of projects which can be researched it can be activities it can be you know even policy documents can be produced via various projects that are funded through these programs they then go on and influence future policy so you know by engaging in programs you do have this opportunity to influence future eu policy but also you know when you're writing um projects trying to get funding through a specific program it obviously helps to link it back to the policy and to really demonstrate how your project is going to deliver on key aspects of whatever the underpinning policy is that that led to the development of that program so it just kind of goes to show that it is all connected you don't have to understand everything but having you know understanding that all of these things are linked and that by linking your project back to policy it's going to be more there's going to be more chance of success it can be really helpful um so yeah just to note before people sometimes people can get very excited when they see those kind of billions upon billions of euro and it might look like a lot of money but it is across the whole of the eu obviously and there's a lot of money set aside for you know neighboring countries and euh to to um to other countries around the world and also a lot of that is absorbed by governments into things like big infrastructure projects and stuff like that so in reality you know the budgets that are actually available to civil society in various member states i mean they're great and they're very um you know there's lots of um potential there and they're definitely something to look into but it's not you know you're not dealing with billions and billions of euro and and it is quite um you know to access that money it can take a lot of time they have a lot of systems to ensure that you know it's not it's not quick it's not easy and it doesn't um you know you're not going to be able to get money kind of very uh reactively to things it needs to be something that you proactively plan and and there's a lot of kind of terms and conditions attached to it that you have to adhere to so you know just to set some expectations there if you're looking for something quick and easy and you see those types of those types of numbers you know don't get too excited one thing i will say though is that in this financial framework there is um more of a kind of push for what's called citizen involvement so more and more programs are looking to involve citizens and communities and obviously our sector the community voluntary sector is usually the representative body for a community of people or a geographical community or you know citizens and so there's there's even more of a role now for the community policy sector than there ever has been before and just to note characteristics of eu funding so um if you do find you know we will present kind of a bunch of different programs this morning and hopefully some of them will be relevant to your organization but i suppose once you've found one that has got potential what what can you expect from eve wondering what does it look like so um the first thing to do is i suppose what eu funding is um so it is an opportunity to learn and share to connect with and influence policy kind of harken back to that um kind of little graph that i showed there in the little diagram that i showed that you know a lot of projects when designed well can have a real impact on how future policy is is created uh it's an opportunity to be innovative and so you know the the one thing about eu funding is not doesn't usually fund kind of business as usual but it can be a real chance to kind of develop something new and different maybe something that your organization has never done before and it can be a chance as well to kind of fast track those strategic objectives so you know to get that kind of injection of funding that you need to develop this new and innovative thing maybe there's been something you've been meaning to do for a long time this is an opportunity to kind of build a project around that and kind of fast track it it's an opportunity to collaborate with partners not all eu funding but a lot of eu funding um requires some element of partnership um so and we really encourage people to look at that as a positive as something that um can be of real benefit to their organization so look at it as an as an opportunity to collaborate with partners rather than kind of an inconvenient requirement and and obviously it's an opportunity to kind of build capacity and organizational profile one thing we often say to to organizations is that um you know eu funding is probably some of the most challenging fun thing you'll deal with um it's very competitive and there's high standards in terms of reporting and project management and delivering on objectives and all of that but having said that once you do it every other every other funding can kind of seem easy by comparison and it really helps to kind of professionalize your organization to start putting standards in place really good systems that will serve you you know for for years to come so it's a good investment into your capacity and into the skill and knowledge of your staff as well and but it also as well you know obviously having e funding and operating on that international level is really excellent for your organizational profile as well so there's lots of kind of opportunities in it but just again in that kind of vein of expectation setting it's important to say what it's not as well so i've alluded to this already but it's not quick usually you can be waiting around for enough for the for the right deadline to come along then you apply for it you can take them three months to assess assess it and then it can take them you know it can take another couple of months to even get the kind of grant agreed so if you're thinking oh i have a thing in june that i need i need some funding for like no in january funding is not for you um and then it's not easy as i said it is quite challenging um it's worth building that capacity and it's a huge investment into your staff and into your future and to kind of diversifying your funding and strengthening your organization but with that means it's not easy it's not without risk so eu funding primarily almost exclusively funds projects so and projects are inherently risky that's why we call them projects they're not operational work so you know there has to be your organization has to be kind of robust enough to take on a certain amount of risk there there are there are always risks that you know something will go wrong in the project so maybe there would be a international pandemic which you know that will happen in one of our projects and we have to rethink okay how are we going to deliver this project remotely because we can no longer do it as planned and you know maybe there'll be all kinds of different things that can happen so you have to be ready to deal with kind of risk you can't guarantee everything but there's lots of things that you can do to kind of mitigate and reduce the risk which we can help you with but it's not completely without risk so that's something that you have to be aware of and it's not core funding mostly so there are some exceptions of kind of things called operating grants but by and large um it won't kind of keep the lights on and doors open this is project-based funding so it can run staff time and um it can make some contributions to overheads and fund activities it'll fund subcontracting costs and outgoing costs and things like that but it won't it won't fund you know it won't be a contribution to core um not significantly anyway you're not going to get that kind of everyday funding or unrestricted funding and then it's not national funding mostly there are some exceptions to this and we look at that when we go into more programs in more detail and we start looking at each one and there are some programs that are national but by and large you know when you're getting involved in new funding it's it's to be prepared for that element of partnership that you will have to collaborate transnationally and have various eu partners and most of the time that would be the case and i suppose it's on that topic that um i said we'd have a little closer look at and we kind of touched on it here um but it can be a real challenge for a lot of organizations and i suppose we at access europe at the wheel we're aware of that so we have kind of a number of supports available to assist with that so emily mentioned our training that's going to happen in april and that you're free to sign up to it's part of this series of training where we will take a kind of deeper dive into how to build eu partnerships um but we also have a partner base or our partner database i should say and that i'm going to hand over to my colleague christina to talk about now so christina i'll manage the slides but you can come in here yes thank you emma um so uh should i also first talk about access europe and what you can kind of mention i suppose or i could skip over this one yes i think it's good let's do that in the end so okay great so that we have a focus on the on the on the partner database um and so hi my name is christina happy to meet you all um and um the partner database that i will be talking now a couple of minutes about was just launched in december and i'm pretty sure that some of you have heard of it already because i saw some names um in the in the participants list um here are today some organizations who have already set up a profile in this database um which is great and i will show you in a second how it looks online and live um but first of all i would like to very quickly show you how the process works um it is for you if you are an irish civil society organization looking for partners for you funded projects and we just heard from emma that it the partnership is crucial for you projects but it also that it can be tricky to find the right partners especially in other european countries if you don't have yet an european network and with this platform with this tool that we did build we would like to make your work your life easier um so the process is pretty easy you create a profile we will share the link in the um chat in a second and then you have the possibility to present your organization and to show your funding goals your strengths and what your interests and focus and then in the end you can be invited into your project so other european organizations will be able to find you and i will now emma if you would stop your screen sharing then i will show you online live how that works so this is um the database and you see already that here are a lot of beautiful profiles um we have around 40 by now and what you can do i will just show you how it works so for example you see them all here now right so but as a european organization who comes probably from france let's say i say i would be interested to find someone who does cultural artistic innovation but is also working in the digital space does education and training and rural development so you have these filters over here you can filter by interest and by focus as you can see so what you can see is that it now reduces to a couple of organizations and the possibility then is to click into um the single pro profiles and to look at the organizations so i would be interested now in the limerick youth service because they look so nice and um you have then the possibility to present your organization and it works like this so it's short it's short and clean so we really wanted to keep it simple here so you have a description of your organization you have the possibility to get in contact directly you have the fact the facts on top um the website social media you learn about this organization the focus the interests and here comes the most important part which is the part of the eu project experience so in the case of the limerick youth service they already have substantial experience so they worked with a couple of euros plus funding they did european solidarity projects but and this is very important don't worry if you don't have um your experience um yet and i saw it in the poll in the beginning a lot of organizations are here so i would say 50 of the profiles already set up in the database right now state that they have no experience yet in your project or in new projects which is totally fine because access europe is exactly here to help you and support you and advise you so if you state that you have none we make sure that that the organizations who are reaching out that they know but there is access europe and they are not alone so no worries about that this is exactly the goal that we want to right so but still if it comes to stating your funding goals and strength i would um highly recommend to put some thought into that and to think about it so even if you haven't worked in your projects before and you fill out this profile your profile and you set it up to say okay but what do i really want because the first step and also what what emma mentioned is it's all about the development of your organization so you should know what you are your goals what are your strengths what can you bring in into your projects so also filling out profile setting it up for your organization is kind of the first step to create this eu development strategy with which is which is actually very important so you have the possibility here to put up pretty pictures a video and then here is the contact button so the organizations from other you countries who are looking at this professor saying okay this is really interesting they can reach out directly so how does it work to set up the profile i will be very quick because you can have a look yourself you just click on the button up here in the right corner create a new profile it brings you to a kind of a support page where you have the possibility to watch this quick video we provide some tips and tricks you also have here the possibility to download a pdf with all questions because um the the form when you fill it out it will be about like 10 minutes only but you can't save in between so to if you would like to prepare yourself download this pdf and then you click on register and it brings you to um the form and again it's about like 10 minutes but put some thought into this we would recommend that um and then it asks you questions if you are a civil society organization yes then it asks questions about your organization about the experience um when you have filled out this registration form after a couple of days you will appear here in the partner database maybe i will reach out to you and let you know okay it's up there but it would be great if we could get more pictures or maybe more content in this in this section um so it could that this could happen or if you have questions you can of course also all the time reach out to me after you set up this profile you will not be able to change it or to adjust it yourself but you can always write to me and i'm super happy to update the content if needed okay aya and very important we will start the eu campaign very soon so that means that we will distribute this platform all over um the european uh member states all eu member states um so via our networks via national contact points so if you um want to be with us from the start set up your profile this week or next week so that we make sure you we will we will communicate this platform more often but we will start this new campaign very soon and of course make sure that also the european civil society organizations see your profile and reach out to you so that it is great thank you very much christina um that's an excellent overview of our of our platform um let me just i'm gonna re-share my slides and while i do that i'm just gonna address i was answering some kind of questions in the in the chat box there as you were speaking christina so just to just to note that access your the advice and the support of access europe and our partner database have nothing to do with your membership of the wheel you are absolutely whether you're members or not uh you're more than free to to um to reach out to us and we will help you to around anything to do with eu funding so obviously we'd encourage you to join the wheel but you don't have to join the wheel at all to avail of our sports and services uh so just be aware of that and i did kind of note in the chat box there that we might be a little bit inundated after today's training with different kind of queries about e-funding and you know specific to your organization but uh so it might take us a while to get around to everybody but we will get around to everybody and we welcome you to you know have a think about what would you like to achieve through eu funding and what you know what kind of project idea do you have and then our role really is to help you find okay this is the program you need to look at and this is what the opportunities are for for that particular type of idea so just to kind of illustrate these are the types of programs that we're talking about so it's a bit of a messy table but it will make a little bit more sense by the time i'm finished explaining it but as you can see this goes on for two slides there's a lot of different programs that are available and thankfully for most of these programs there is a national contact point um who are absolute experts on that specific program and know all of the ins and outs and all of the details of their specific program so a lot of the time in access europe we're kind of signposting you to you know okay you need to talk to um the uh for erasmus plus say for example uh it sounds like that's an rss plus project you know we can help you to design it and kind of flesh it out but you need to talk to learners because they're the national uh contact point for erasmus plus sorry so for a lot of our a lot of our advice is about that so access europe is essentially kind of a central hub we provide the kind of wrap-around supports so things like help with partnerships we can help with reviewing applications we can help with kind of general advice and then sign posting to the national contact points who are the absolute experts and they can help you with the more technical details of that specific program so just just to reiterate that that is available to everybody um it's it's publicly funded by the department of foreign affairs so um it doesn't depend on your wheel membership um and we encourage you to reach out to us but just bear with us if it does take us a little while to get back to you but back to this beautiful table so what this is is it's an overview i suppose of the different european programs that are available from 2024 to 2027. this isn't all of them but it's most of them that are most applicable to civil society we have to try and you know focus on the ones that were had the most potential or were most relevant because otherwise we could kind of be here all day and what i've done is i've just for those of you who do have a little bit more experience and maybe remember that the previous mff i've kind of designed it like this to give you um a bit of an overview of what's changed since the 2020 mff ended so um this will hopefully illustrate to you how what's different in the new 2021-2027 one and and it'll give any of the kind of newbies an oversight into all the different programs that are out there and what we will do is we're going to go through this in a little bit more detail we'll go through each program and have a look at it and i have examples for most of them so you can see what kind of project funded under this program looks like but i wanted to just do this kind of overview first so some of you might have heard of horizon 2020 so that was the eu fund that's the eu funding program for research and innovation and so that ran up until 2020 obviously um so now it's going to be called horizon europe it's kind of bigger and better than ever it's um got about i think it's 95 billion or is it 96 billion euros funding so it's the world's largest research and innovation program and it's a massive program and we'll have a look at a bit more detail there it is mainly catered towards kind of research institutes and industry and university but there is a role for civil society in it and i'll go through that in a little bit more detail shortly uh again some of you might have been uh familiar with the european social funds um and as well as that the european program for employment and social innovation which kind of abbreviated too easy and so in this program both or in this in this new mff both of those have combined into esf plus so that will be overall the european social fund makes up the vast majority of it but the the easy kind of that smaller program easy has been absorbed into it and it'll be a strand now within esf plus you'll often see that in eu programs when one bigger program absorbs another smaller program it becomes a plus so you'll see lots of pluses in the eagle program so that's what that means um so that's that one and then there's the some of you again might have heard of the rights of quality citizenship program or the rec program and then york for citizens i'm sure many of you heard for that because it's very specific to our sector and also the wheel was the national contact point for europe for citizens up until it ended in 2020 and so uh you know you might have heard of those ones so the update about that for 2021 2027 is these were two kind of similar size programs so they've been melded together and so they're not a plus because one didn't absorb the other but they would build it together so they get this brand new identity which is the citizenship equality rights and values program or the serve program so this combines those previous two programs together and looks of all things citizenship equality rights and values and so there hasn't been a contact point designated for that yet in ireland but there's loads of opportunities under that program that's one that definitely all civil society groups need to be looking at and the justice program that's continuing as it was there's a continued program agreed kind of link there where you can read about it and again we look at all of these in a little bit more detail the erasmus plus program and it's the same program with some additional features and a much increased budget so i think that their budget tripled um i'm not actually 100 sure about that but it was they were uh they were talking it's definitely been massively increased so there's lots of new potential under erasmus plus and with more or less the same rules as the last program just some kind of new little bits and pieces similarly for the european solidarity core this was a new program last time around it was actually only released properly i think around 2018 so it's a very kind of young program and but it's a really interesting one for our sector because it funds uh volunteer projects here in ireland and abroad so it's really interesting for anybody working with volunteers or in the area of youth or anything like that you definitely need to be looking into the european solidarity courts a really accessible program with lots of different opportunities and again we look at it in a little bit more detail later and the leader program again i'm sure everybody's probably heard of leader and it's a rural development program so this is one of those examples of the national program as well esf is also esl plus now is also a national program and but leisure is one of those ones where it's kind of the irish government is given the funding and they allocate it through a thing called the leader program so it's what we call decentralized it's not managed by brussels it's managed by the irish government and so at the moment the delay there's been a delay of the official kind of leader program will be out into 2023 and a transitional fund has been established to kind of tied us over until that point so you can click through there to read about that and again you know all of these slides all of these links will be provided the life program is another one that's very interesting there's some national opportunities but some that's a bit of a mixture sometimes it can be a national project sometimes it has to be an eu project but that's the program to do with environment climate and biodiversity so a really interesting one for any um environmental groups that might be here the asylum migration and integration fund that's also been continued that sits within the department of justice that's another example of a kind of decentralized national fund where it's managed by the irish government and it's not managed directly from uh brussels and there's various interpro uh interreg programs that ireland falls into mainly the northwest europe the um the atlantic program the atlantic area program and the northern periphery arctic region so there's interests are interregional programs and there's loads of them all over europe but only you know as a country you only fall within certain regions so that's why we are in just a few kind of inter-regional programs and so that's a really interesting one and what we saw last year was there was a kind of delay in the interweb programs and now is a really good time to learn about them because they're just starting to release their first calls over the next few months and again lots of people would have heard of the ps4 program so this is primarily a program for northern ireland and the border counties and that's now become piece plus and we know that when it has a plus it means it's absorbed a smaller program so northern ireland used to be part of a smaller kind of inter-reg program and so peace plus has absorbed that now um and so we have a bigger larger much more ambitious program than ever before so that's again a really interesting one if you're on the border counties and we're going to look at all of these in a little bit more detail shortly and there's also the health program it was called the third health program in the last mff now it's been completely kind of rethought i think it's been very much influenced by the pandemic obviously that they've decided to kind of radically rethink their health program so um now it's called eu for health and again there's a link there where you can read more about that it is more kind of aimed at kind of medical systems and modernizing kind of medical systems in various countries but on medical research but there are sometimes opportunities for civil society groups in the area of health so it's one that's worth looking at creative europe again for any of the created europe or creative organizations that are here or arts organizations or to do with media or film or anything in that area and they're that that program is continuing and it's been increased and you can read about it there and then there's talks of two new programs i haven't actually seen any updates about whether when these programs are going to start releasing calls or anything like that but we've been promised that there'll be a digital europe program um which should you know theoretically have some opportunities for our sector to kind of digitalize them modernize and then the just transition program which is all around i suppose the twin transitions the digital transition and the green transition and making sure that nobody is left behind in that process and so again that might be one that that's interesting to a lot of organizations and we have a look at what's been released about that so far but like i said these are new so there's not a lot of information about them so this is these are the programs that we're going to look at today as you can see there's quite a few of them and we're going to go into each one and have a look at what are the main priorities well what is it what are the main priorities what kind of potential does it have for our sector and what you know where i can i found an example of a project that kind of gives a little bit of context to what can be funded through it um but it is a lot as i said and this is a huge amount of information and it can get quite technical so what we're going to do is take those kind of small breaks try to give everybody's brain a little bit of space to breathe and so that we don't overwhelm you with information and we're going to take the first one now so we're just going to take little five minute breaks so it's um 10 42 now um we can come back around 47 or 48 so 10 47 or 48 so we encourage you to grab some tea or coffee get up and move but don't look at a screen and just give your mind a little bit of a break for a few minutes and we'll see you back here in five minutes okay thanks everyone [Music] [Music] okay so we're back hopefully everybody got a bit of a chance to to move and to give their brains a little bit of a break uh because we're gonna head in now to look at the kind of deeper dive of the different programs and what the potential is so i think a lot of programs are very um you know kind of multi-faceted uh there's there's a lot of different opportunities for different types of organizations under each program so hopefully these will all be interesting to you but we'll jump in now with horizon europe so there we go okay so um the first program as i said is horizon europe if you remember from the table this used to be horizon 2020 in the previous program and it rebranded in 2021 so it's the eu's key funding program for research and innovation and it has a budget of over 95 billion euro and it tackles things like climate change uh helps to achieve the un sustainability goals or the sdgs and boost the eu's competitiveness and growth so in terms of there's three themes in the new horizon europe program so the first one is science and technology so this is the eu science and technological excellence and strengthening the european research area so this is encouraging i suppose various member states and other partners outside of the member states to work together around scientific excellence and research to kind of i suppose help europe compete on the global stage uh when it comes to research and innovation there's also this society theme um so this is i suppose the one that's probably most relevant to our sector and this is our tackling specific policy priorities that the eu has including the green and digital transitions but also the sdgs and then there's the economy so it's boosting europe's innovation uptake competitiveness and jobs so there's the three themes that you're kind of looking at with horizon and i think you'll see there there's lots of potential for civil society to play a role in delivering on those different things but in terms of the structure you're looking at different pillars so you have the pillar one which is the excellent science pillar this is things like that european research council there's also things that the mars could have asked hurry action so this is really interesting one for for our sector because it allows um a researcher from anywhere in europe to come and work in an organization uh usually it's in a university but it can be in a civil society group to do research on a specific topic and it can be fully funded for i think it's definitely up to a year but sometimes up to two years we will have an event around the msca actions later on this year with the contact point that is in the irish university situation university association so ivan halpern is the contact point there so we'll be doing an event with her later on in the year where you can learn more about this but there's that's a tremendous opportunity to get essentially a fully paid member of staff to work specifically on research and then you can just partner with a university or research institute to do that so that's you know when it comes to the excellent science pillar you might look at it and think well that's not really for civil society but there is some opportunities there and pillar two though i suppose is the one that is more uh specific to our sector so it looks at things like health culture creativity inclusivity civil security digital industry space climate and energy and mobility and then food bioeconomy natural resources agriculture environment and then in the pillar three you're looking at the innovation council different innovation ecosystems and the european institute of innovation and technology so and all of this kind of is underpinned by kind of encouraging more and more eu countries to participate and kind of collaborate together to to i suppose amplify the impact and the strength of their research so that's the kind of european research area and an example of a project here something is this one this we um reinvest investing in the right to a home uh it's housing happen hope so this was a horizon 2020 project and it was research focused on the experience of lone parent families living in emergency homeless accommodation and it's part of this reinvest project and it investigates the societal challenges of under investment in social services and trends in service sectors so i chose this example because it illustrates something called engaged research which i think this is where our sector has potential in horizon so um for most for the vast majority of organizations in our sector leading a horizon application is not really a possibility they're massive and ridiculously competitive you usually need to involve a wide range of partners multiple sectors and you have to be extremely detailed in the application in terms of the science the research the innovation kind of value of the proposal and essentially the program is geared more towards universities and research institutes and industry however there is definitely a role for our sector to play when we use the support called engage research so this is about um academia and research working together with civil society with community and voluntary group and with citizens to tackle shared problems together and in this case a civil society group could be brought in as a partner into a horizon europe proposal and could maybe lead a work package or an output or something like that so they play a role and they benefit from the funding but they definitely don't have to go through the process of applying which is really beyond the scope of most civil society organizations so there's um you know there's real opportunities for civil society groups so in the whole area of societal challenges like we have expertise on the specific societal challenges and the impact that they're having on communities we have access to communities and can enable kind of ethical access for researchers to come in and work with a specific community but these kind of things are often kind of out of reach for a lot of research institutes and universities and and this whole approach of engaged research or nothing about us without us is another kind of term you might have heard and this is all this has being very much favored by the eu in this new framework they're seeing that in order to get better and more impactful results and to really mainstream the results of research it's necessary to involve you know the people who are the target of that research so um it's often it's sometimes called as well the quadruple helix approach where it's industry research and public authorities and citizens all working together to address problems and it's recognized that this is you know in order for us to reach the sdgs and to really deliver an impact that this is actually a necessary step so that just means that there's even more opportunity for civil society groups like yourselves to partner with researchers and and you know make available your knowledge your expertise the networks that you have to be integrated into projects around societal challenges and things like that so this is something um that i think is really interesting and this project is an example of that so it looked at qualitative research with peer researchers and a group of families in a family home in dublin over a ten week period and and introducing them to the right to housing and co-producing new insights into the impacts of of hap and the family home emergency accommodation and it also interviewed staff of these organizations and policy experts and practitioners so this was um minute university partnering with focus ireland for this project and it was funded by horizon 2020 so that's an example of how your organization might be able to partner with the research institute where hopefully it's a mutually beneficial relationship where you know we can um you you get uh research that will benefit your work and they get access to communities that they want to um to conduct research on um so just a note on that uh it was launched in ireland in 2021 so if you want to watch launch of the horizon europe program it's uh you can click there and watch the full event because it gives you a good outline of what it is and what they hope to achieve there's a horizon europe irish website they contact enterprise ireland or the main contact point there's several contact points for all the different strands of horizon europe but they're all kind of operated from enterprise ireland and you can see where the commission has summarized them there so if any of that looks interesting definitely encourage you to reach out to um the national contact points um and certainly reach out to also schools in the first instance to help us kind of you know to help you perform to your project and see if we can advise you in any way and then we can win with the relevant horizon contact point um the next one that we're going to look at is the european social fund um plus or what we what we're calling esf plus and as i said uh before our break this combines the previous european social fund with the eu program for employment and social innovation or the easy program and so this is going to be called esf plus from now on so esf plus so it's the eu's main instrument for investing in people with the aim of building a more social and inclusive europe so you can see already that it's quite relevant to our sector it finances the implementation of the principles that underpin the european pillar of social rights so that's the policy that it's designed to deliver on just harking back to our circle uh diagram earlier the priorities for this program are about creating and protecting job opportunities promoting social inclusion fighting poverty developing the skills needed for the digital agreement transition investing in young people and addressing child property so it's a huge program and you can see those kind of um priorities outlined there and the total budget for the whole of europe is 88 billion and so you can see how it will work here this is the structure and the various components of it there's the traditional kind of esf focus on employment education and social inclusion but this time in this program you're also seeing it kind of absorb the europe age program so the uh european age for the most deprived or the feed program you can see that box there so some of you might have been familiar with that i know a lot of different charities were using the feed program particularly homeless charities and so it kind of has absorbed that it's also there's also that investment in youth kind of strand that it's absorbing there's um a health across cutting priority across many programs is health now especially if it's an epidemic so there'll be a health component to it and and importantly then it's the eu priority kind of actions and experimentation so this is probably where we're going to see priorities and funding calls around social innovation and social enterprise and social economy so that's a really interesting one under that easy program so what we found is that this is obviously a very interesting program for our sector what we've seen previously in previous programs is that a huge portion of the funding that has been allocated through esf and is decentralized out to irish to the irish government to to distribute and to manage um like a huge portion of that has been allocated to the public sector so it's especially funding things like the education and training boards and initiatives like youth reach for example and many others so in this program now that there's this new mff we certainly hope that more of that more of that funding could be ring fenced for our sector and could be open for applications so that's something that we're kind of hoping and that we'll keep an eye on over um the next few months as calls there hasn't been a proper call released for this yet so as calls are released over the coming year we'll keep an eye on that and keep everybody informed about it but there is there is one nice example that i was able to find and of an esf funded project so it's this epic project employment for people from immigrant communities it's delivered by business in the community in ireland and a movement for sustainable change in business that inspires and enables businesses to bring about a sustainable low-carbon economy economy and a more inclusive society so there's there this initiative epic of theirs run from 2017 to 2021 it provides specialized supports for migrants and refugees to help them integrate into irish society and it was 1.925 million under esf program uh for employee sheet employment employability sorry inclusion and learning um and katrina from business in the community was not only kind enough to let me feature her project but even sent me these lovely pictures of them they have their their pre-coverage graduation class there and then their their postcode zoom graduation class so um it's a fantastic program it's impacted the lives of over three and a half thousand people from 101 different nationalities and 68 of the program participants have found jobs or entered training or volunteering in their area of interest so that's really interesting and it's a good example of a program there uh esf plus the managing authority for that states within the department to further higher education research innovation and science you can contact them there and you can check out they've got an excellent website events.i.e there that i really encourage you to look at because they keep them they focus on all different types of eu funds but they have really excellent information about asf plus and any of the kind of governance government managed ones and the next one and as i said don't worry we're taking breaks regularly so i'm kind of running through them here the idea is to give you a kind of quick overview of each one so that you can then have a think about maybe where a project might stitch in and maybe reach out to us so that we can we can help you navigate um but don't worry we'll have another break soon because it is a lot we're going pretty fast here but the next program is the serv program citizenship equality rights and values and as i mentioned when we were looking at the overall table this is one that i think is really interesting for our sector and you should definitely keep an eye on um so this combines the previous programs you work for citizens and the rights of quality citizenship program as i said uh for this for 2021 to 2027 it has a budget of 1.55 billion and so the biggest ever eu funding program for promoting and protecting fundamental rights rule of law and democracy inside the eu so to have a look at it the the objective the overall objective of serve is to protect and promote rights and values as enshrined in the treaties in particular by supporting civil society organizations so essentially our sector in order to save open and democratic and inclusive societies and so again you can see there that kind of heart back to how a program is there to deliver on policies it's there to deliver in the rights of values that are enshrined in the treaty during the treaties i should say so how that looks and that overall objective is transferred into kind of three strands there's the equality of right strand which is all about promoting rights and there's the citizen citizens engagement and participation strand and then there's the daphne strand uh combating violence so you might think that one's a little bit out of place there like why is it called daphne that's because back in the very old eu funding days of about uh maybe two mffs ago so you know pre-2014 there used to be a program that was just called daphne that was about gender equality and combating violence against women and children and so that got absorbed into rac and then rac and and the european citizens programs got combined and then we end up with these you know but daphne was kind of recognized as a brand they included it as one of the strong's in uh surf so um we'll uh i'll show you an example of what a program might look like so this is one that is managed by unicef and so it's children as champions of change or ccc.com and obviously unicef a very well-known organization operating in over 190 countries and territories to save children's lives defend their their rights to help them fulfill their potential from early childhood straight to adolescence so the project lead is unicef ireland in this they partnered with various unicef branches around europe and they formed a project that was there to help increase awareness in key stakeholders about children's rights support child rights schools to embed child participation and respect for child's rights and education settings to improve rights-based inclusive meaningful child's participation and voice and influence in the public sphere so it was a two-year project it was funded by the rac program right before it finished up and i think now you know if they were to pursue another round it would be under the serve program obviously because that's where that's where that strand lives now um it's a grant of over 870 000 and it had partners from various unicef managing or national committees from all of those different eu countries so really interesting project and that's an example of what would have been an rac program back in the day that's now been involved in serve we have loads of examples of your citizens projects that were here in ireland around things like volunteering and town twinning and european remembrance remembering kind of key dates in european history so there's all kinds of different projects that can be funded and through serve it's a hugely diverse program you can see some i've linked there to an event that we did that showcased a bunch of different kind of citizenship type projects that were funded under that strand and as we used to be the national contact point for your position so we have lots of really nice examples so this is a really interesting one i think for our sector and it's something to look at and you can have a look at various different types of projects and just the diversity of organizations that applied for this funding everything from uh kind of local councils to arts organizations and to volunteer centers you know there was a there's kind of something for everybody within within serve and so you can watch a little bit more about the old europe physicians program here and understand how that would be translated into serve and you can keep up to date by looking at the serve funding attenders portal as well there's calls open right now so you might want to look at that at the moment the responsibility for serve sits within department of children equality disability integration and youth there hasn't been an official ncp an official national contact point appointed yet so it's still a little bit watch this space for that but that doesn't mean you can't go ahead and apply obviously and obviously access europe will do our best to kind of plug the gap the fact that there's no ncp there to try and support applications um so that's something that's well worth looking at for our sector another one then is justice and this as a if you remember back in the table i put a note that the justice program has been extended so there's no rebrand or anything here and i'm not going to go into huge detail on this one because it's pretty niche but if anybody here works in the area of protection of civil liberties or criminal rights or rights of victims it could be something that's that's interesting to you unfortunately i couldn't find an example of a successful justice project in ireland um at least not on the commission's kind of website where they summarize all the successful projects that have been funded to the program but obviously if you know of one please do let me know because i like to collect good examples but it's a program that funds um funding to support judicial cooperation in civil and criminal matters so training for legal practitioners and effective access to justice for citizens and businesses it strengthens democracy and the rule of law and fundamental rights it's 305 million for this mff so it's one of the smaller programs but as i said it's quite niche so if this is your area you know it's not like you'd be facing as much competition maybe as some of the bigger programs and and it's centrally managed so there's there's no ncp in ireland uh i think it's it's related to the department of justice but there's no official ncp in ireland um so and with that i think we're get we're on to the next this is our last one before we have another five minute break just so that you know because again i'm aware that we're moving quite fast and it's a lot of information but this is another one that i think is of huge interest to our sector and i'd be very surprised that lots of people um who counted themselves as being experienced in eu funding weren't involved in ransom's plus ones it's a one of a huge um interest and potential for our sector so erasmus plus is the eu's program to support education training youth and sport in europe it's an estimated 26.2 billion and that's nearly double the last mff so i think i mentioned that when i was doing the overview that i knew that it increased but um yeah it's doubled in this one so it's a big program and the eu is really invested in it and this program will focus on social inclusion the green and digital transitions and promoting young people's participation in democratic life so i suppose you might be starting to see kind of common threads among the different eu programs and that's because it's the same set of policies that underpin this program so just kind of harken back to that how how the policy goes on to influence the different programs it also supports again in terms of the policy that this program is meant to deliver on it supports the european pillar of social rights the eu youth strategy and develops the european dimension in sport so in terms of structure it offers what are called mobility and cooperation opportunities so mobility projects essentially cover staff and volunteers and other kind of target groups to travel around europe to learn to study to do job shadowing things like that so we talk about mobility projects and eu funding mobilities usually travel so people will often say in the whole eu project space that they're going on a mobility which doesn't really make sense in normal english but in eu english it means that they're they're going on a study trip or they're attending a course abroad and it's funded by the eu because that's what the eu calls them and so that's kind of one-half if they do these mobility projects and they also do what are called cooperation projects or collaboration projects and these are more i suppose these can be various um organizations around europe teaming up to kind of tackle a shared challenge and sometimes they just use it for kind of networking and discussion and training best practice and all of that so it could be kind of a small scale project that's just networking based or um you know if the bigger projects will allow those partners to come together and collaborate to build something or create something together and i'll give an example of what that looks like now in a minute so when we're talking about mobility and cooperation projects this is what we mean there are also things called structured dialogues that are funded by erasmus plus so these are about bringing young people and policy makers together so that's a whole other area but we didn't want to go into too much detail here so we said we'd keep it at that so the different areas that it looks that there's higher education vocational education training school education adult education youth and sport so the main they're the kind of different threats that erasmus plus focuses on and i think the main one for our sector our definitely vocational education training strand has a lot of potential this includes training for staff and practitioners within our sector so for example the wheel has had success getting funding underneath this strand so that we can you know develop new courses and outputs that we can use to help train the sector i'll give an example of that now in a minute but if you work with training professionals whether it's youth workers whether it's carers anything like that in any shape or form you know vet might be the right um the might the right kind of avenue for you the next thing is uh adult education is another one that i think could be really interesting for our sector so this is where you're not working with professionals you're working with the kind of general public so you're providing some kind of educational offering for the general public or for non-professionals um so again a lot of i think sometimes this trolls a lot of organizations because they don't realize that you know they don't consider themselves an adult education organization but um you but you don't have to kind of identify as one to be engaged in educational projects so for example if you work with people who are experiencing homelessness and you want to develop kind of a career or a course in soft skills or pathways to independence for those people i mean that's an education project and even though you might consider yourself you know we're a homelessness organization we're not an adult education provider the purpose of that project is adult education so you could definitely apply and similarly you know again if you wanted to do um a course for um whether it's kind of more um informal carers like not professional carers uh to do with older or if you want to have a course for older people that you work with that you know maybe is a some kind of education around you know healthy lifestyle or lifelong learning or whatever even though you wouldn't necessarily consider yourself an adult education organization you can apply because your project is about education as long as the main goal is to educate and as long as it's aligned with the arises plus program objectives uh you can apply under this program even if you don't just kind of consider yourself an educational institute so that's just something that i think a lot of people they look at arousals plus well for one thing they look at erasmus and they think of universities and think oh that's got nothing to do with us because of the erasmus year abroad kind of thing and that is part of the overall harassment plus program but there's so much more to it then when they look in a little bit further they think oh it's for it's for vt providers or it's for others education providers it's got nothing to do with us so a big kind of piece of what we end up doing a lot of nexus europe is trying to explain actually there's so many opportunities for our sector here you just have to kind of rethink uh you know how you're looking at your project if it's an education project it belongs more or less within horizons plus um and then obviously i mean all th