During the past few weeks, the FRIDGE project partnership has taken its first steps in the Action Plan Development process as two online meetings were organised around the subject.
Learning from peer IE project Regions4Food
The first online meeting was held on the 18th of February. In the meeting the partners heard examples of action planning from two partner regions of the peer IE project Regions4Food.
The first presentation was held by Mr. Zsolt Pálmai from STRIA (South Transdanubia Regional Innovation Agency), Hungary and the second by Mrs. Soila Huhtaluhta from Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences, from the region of South Ostrobothnia, Finland.
In their presentations Mr. Pálmai and Mrs. Huhtaluhta gave the partners a good view of how action plans are created in a common framework among the Regions4Food partnership.
For both partners a crucial part of the action plan process has been the identification of key needs and barriers to which the actions in the action plans seek solutions. Secondly, the identification of and learning from the Good Practices have also played a key role.
Later in the process the action plans have been further developed in a peer review process where other partners have commented the action plan drafts from other partners. The peer reviews have helped the partners to exchange more ideas around the action planning and to fine tune the final action plans and ensure that they are easy to understand for people outside the region.
In his presentation Mr. Pálmai also reminded that when designing the actions partners should always keep in mind the policy instrument and be aware of the relevant calls within the policy instruments.
Action planning in general – tips and tricks
In the second half of the meeting the FRIDGE partners heard an inspirational presentation about action planning in general from an European project expert Mrs. Sara Banchi (Resolvo Srl). In her presentation Mrs. Banchi gave the partners many useful tips and reminders for the action plan development and answered to many questions received from the partners.
Mrs. Banchi’s presentations will certainly be used by many of the partners while developing and writing their action plans.
Sharing ideas and supporting each other
On the second meeting, held on the 23rd of February, the FRIDGE partners presented and shared their preliminary ideas of the action plan development with each other.
The starting points for the action plan development vary between the partners. While for some, the action plan development is familiar from earlier Interreg Europe projects, for some it is the first time to create an IE Action Plan.
Thus, sharing concrete ideas on how each partner is planning to prepare the action plans in their regions was seen important and many useful tips and ides were shared during the meeting.
While hearing the presentations from each partner it was especially nice to see how the good practices and lessons learned so far, have received interest among the partners already.
At the same time partners also identified needs for new good practices and each partner was to identify and share new practices with each other.
All in all, it seems that the exchange of experiences process is going on very well and partners are enthusiastic to help and support each other, which serves a solid ground for a successful implementation of the action plan development as well as all the other project activities.
