On the 28th and 29th of June, MMC Ltd, welcomed the Erasmus+ Interculturality-Mobility project partners to Nicosia, Cyprus, for the programme’s final conference and partnership meeting.
This was the 4th transnational meeting of the project, and covered a broad spectrum of topics, each vital to the effective completion of the Interculturality-Mobility project.
The final conference, hosted by MMC at the Union of Cyprus Journalists building in Nicosia was lead by MMC’s Managing Director, Christina Knais, and supported by various other members of MMC staff. Several external speakers who are locally involved in the intercultural learning and mobility sector in Cyprus were featured at the conference, including the Cypriot National Agency for Erasmus+.
The conference also platformed the Interculturality-Mobility project’s key outputs including the Intercultural competence modular programme for VET providers and VET organisations. This involved a demonstration and delivery of a number of the module workshops created during the life of the programme, including: Talking Points. Talking Points involved attendees going around the room, engaging in discussion with each other as they representated their definitions of various concepts and terms related to the subject of ‘interculturality’. Example terms included: Culture; Mobility; Values; Intercultural Communication; Cultural Awareness; and Norms/Beliefs. This activity was led by Maria Knais, and Alexandros Tabakis, a Trainer at MMC.
Maria Knais then went on to give a presentation explaining Interculturality-Mobility project’s key objectives, strategy, ethos and content.
A further activity during the conference involved participants giving their input on what they believed were the most important intercultural skills to possess, through ranking them by points. This activity was again led by Christina Knais and Alexandros Tabakis, who at the end, counted up all the responses and produced a digital graph summarising the views of all the attendees. The conference attendees were then individually asked to give insight into why they chose the options they did.
This concluded the Interculturality-Mobility conference.
This was followed by the final partnership meeting which reflected on the progress of the Interculturality-Mobility project so far, as well as planning the next stages required to finalise the programme. One of the major decisions made in the meeting, in order to ensure the sustainability of the programme, was to place the learning curriculum onto the main website, including PowerPoint slides, support documents and trainer’s manuals, in English, rather than solely on the original Moodle site. Additionally, it was decided that partners would commence translating modules into each partner’s national language, ensuring the project’s legacy and accessibility to Vocational Education Training staff in each partners’ country as well as ensuring the project’s overall sustainability.
In addition to this, the project’s exploitation strategy was launched, which will utilise various tools, most notably a transnational VET practitioner’s network, ensuring long lasting impact and sustainability of the programme beyond the project’s lifetime and on an international level. This will be situated alongside a range of other actions, activities and tools, including a series of national promotional events in September 2018, that are part of the overall strategy, effective at both European and national levels.