On 5th March 2021 took place the first synergy meeting between MYSEA and HELIOS projects which are both co-funded by ENI CBC MED programme in order to strengthen social inclusion and fight against poverty in the Mediterranean countries.

The synergy meeting was a direct result of the Seminar of  “Best Practices and First Year Achievements” held on 16th February between all 12 of the ENI CBC Med projects financed within the thematic priority A.3 “Promotion of social inclusion and the fight against poverty”, organized to encourage proactive collaboration between projects. A number of standard projects which have been working hard for over a year were able to present some of their initial results to the new strategic projects about to begin their activities. A synergy between Helios and MYSEA became immediately apparent thanks to a series of elements in common.

HELIOS has already completed a year, it has partially finalized methodologies to reach and engage NEETS as beneficiaries, digital platform are nearly completed to carry out tailored skills training courses based on direct interaction with local enterprises and the initial curricula development focusing on the Blue and Circular Economy (BaCE) are well underway.

MYSEA aims to develop skills training packages, on-the-job training certificates, associations to support eco-innovation, TVET staff training and employment contracts.

During the synergy meeting, a number of project partners provided a more detailed outline of the project activities already carried out or planned, and an extremely fruitful discussion pursued on how activity results might be shared for the benefit of  the main stakeholders: NEETs, women and local enterprises.

Some of the suggested synergies were to exchange and co-develop methodologies used to reach and engage the most vulnerable people in the target communities, exchange stakeholder lists, share materials on the digital-learning platform so that more people have access to the materials developed, work together on information days/networks, and, more immediately, make contact with the corresponding common country partner: Jordan, Italy, Greece and Tunisia. It was deemed particularly useful to work on a country level between synergy partners as the partners involved are in different regions, therefore, to help widen the impact of the projects.