RESET: Two days of work in Barcelona in the 1st physical meeting: how to extract and transfer knowledge from EU-funded projects supporting sustainable businesses?
Five partners and one venue. MedWaves, the UNEP-MAP Regional Activity Centre for SCP hosted at Sant Pau the Art Nouveau Site in Barcelona a meeting with all the different partners to discuss on the current state of play of RESET, specially focusing on the interviews held with the 19 EU-funded projects to be analysed and synthesised. This one has been the first physical meeting with all the partners, after the kick-off meeting that was celebrated online in the month of February 2022.
How to extract and capitalize knowledge to further and effectively upstreaming it to other green entrepreneurs and policy-makers in the Mediterranean region? This was the main question that arose in a fruitful debate with all the project partners, coming from different countries: MedWaves (Spain), Leaders International (Palestine), Beyond Group (Lebanon), PIN Polo Prato (Italy) and INJAZ Tunisia (Tunisia).
The meeting started with an analysis on the current state of play. In the months of June and July, all partners have conducted a series of interviews with the different EU projects to extract their main outputs, goals, beneficiaries and activities carried out. Parallel to that, RESET is now researching stakeholders that do need this knowledge, so a template questionnaire was presented on a mixed-method with both open and closed-ended questions for the partners that need knowledge.
As per the rest of the activities and achievements expected from RESET, the two-days event brought along a workplan that was approved by all partners for implementing the next steps of the project. An online ice-breaker to make the session more interactive, the participation of other partners via Zoom that couldn’t attend, a very nice lunch with typical Spanish rice and some breaks to power the batteries up with a tasty coffee and appetizers were also part of the event.
The 2nd official meeting was very strategic to understand how to analyse at what has been done so far and how to support circular economy and sustainable businesses in the Mediterranean level. RESET’s goal is to be keen about existing knowledge and address ‘what works’ to where this is needed. All in all, the main goal is to ensure that knowledge generation is liked to identified needs and also defining the methodology for synthesizing key learnings into actionable strategies.