On June 2 and 3, 2021, the 1st meeting of the MED-QUAD project will occur, organized by the partner Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport (Egypt). The meeting will take place online due to the Covid pandemic. In this meeting, the Steering Committee will deal with management issues. At the same time, the coordinator of the project Epimorfotiki Kilkis Sm LLC, from Greece, will present to the participants the parties concerning the technical and financial issues and dissemination of the project to the general public at the local, national and national transnational level. 

During the meeting, the partners will emphasize the project results after nine months of implementation and the preparation and detailed planning of the following activities of the project. 

It is worth mentioning that after the start of the project, working groups were set up by the corporate structure, which collaborated to implement essential tools for starting actions of the project, e.g. the project management platform at ASANA, the project management manual, the communication plan of the partners etc. The partners then participated in the 'Monitoring and Information System' training held by the ENI CBC Med Joint Technical Secretariat while the project website was created http://www.enicbcmed.eu/projects/med-quad.  The project's partners created pages on Facebook and LinkedIn to spread the purpose and activities of the project to the general public and the professional community. At the same time, the participants in the project created a page for the MED-QUAD project on their institutional pages, which provides the respective national language information about the project. 

In addition to the reference to the first results of the project, during the 1st meeting, the participants will have the opportunity to discuss the following activities related to creating the city development groups, the training of the members that will make them up, and the living labs' organization. The creation of urban development teams and the organization of live workshops are vital points of innovation. The partners expect all the above activities to contribute to the local, sustainable development of the Mediterranean countries. 

Specifically, project' partners will select through a jointly defined and gradual process, three to five members of experts from the local government, universities and private and public sector companies, who will form the city development group. The city development groups will have defined skills and position in the area, and their members will be trained to fulfil team actions to meet the city and society's long-term expectations and needs as a whole. On the other hand, live innovation workshops will aim to digitize issues related to water management and traceability of agricultural products and cultural heritage. The MED-QUAD project seeks to create a socially aware university after the city development teams and live laboratories in each participating country will be set up, and their members receive specialized training. The purpose is to make the university active for the citizens, having not only educational but also social character. The project's partners expect all the above to contribute to local, sustainable development and cooperation between the four key players of innovation: higher education institutions/research centers, the state, businesses and society (local government) as the project is based on the quadruple helix approach. 

Finally, during the meeting, the partners will discuss the stage at which each activity is in the current phase and decide both to develop the activities and plan the 2nd steering committee meeting. 

Download the agenda.