Last week, 19 representatives from Eurodiaconia members gathered together in Budapest for our two-day training workshop on EU funding and project management, hosted by our member the Reformed Church in Hungary.

The aim of the event was to give participants a better knowledge of EU funding instruments and programmes and to enhance their capacity in the area of project management. The participants came from our member organisations in Hungary, Germany, Slovakia, Sweden, Latvia, Italy, Spain, Greece, Romania and Armenia.

On the first day, the workshop introduced Eurodiaconia‘s structure and its project work, and presented basic project management approaches and methods. The participants had also the opportunity to share some feedbacks and inputs based on their experience in developing or creating social projects.

The Eurodiaconia project team gave also an overview of the funding instruments within the current EU Budget – the 2014-2020 Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF). This overview included a more in-depth look at specific funding programmes such as Erasmus+, the Asylum Migration & Integration Fund and the Employment and Social Innovation programme. The participants were also provided with concrete examples of past and current projects from our network and an overview of the Eurodiaconia Funding Toolkit.

On the second day, the participants had the opportunity to learn more about the proposed 2021-2027 MFF and the most interesting developments regarding the social sector. Furthermore, additional guidelines for finding suitable calls for proposals and preparing project applications were presented.

Throughout the workshop, participants had the chance to get involved with interactive activities to share their experience and to deepen their knowledge and skills of funding and project management, as well as to practice working with EU calls for proposals and funding documents.

 

We look forward to future training and learning opportunities to enhance the knowledge, exchange and capacity building of our members: in 2019 our network will organise two new training workshops on EU funding and project management. To know more about these workshops, please contact our Policy, Projects & Research Officer Florian at florian.tuder@eurodiaconia.org.