KEP

A two-week study visit (3 - 17 March 2015) took place in Albania in the Shkodra, Malesi e Madhe and Puke Districts (Shkodra Region), in the framework of the one-year KEP AUSTRIA project for the development of a “New micro-credit scheme to women empowerment”. The Project is co-financed by the Austrian Development Cooperation with around 50.000 EUR.

Eighteen women from Foca, Srebrenica and Bratunac participated in a two-day training on power and economic leadership from 31 January to 1 February 2015 in the framework of the project “Smallholders Farmers’ Access to Markets in Eastern and Northern Bosnia-Herzegovina and Northern Albania” . The event focused on exploring the concept of power amongst women from different backgrounds, including entrepreneurs, farmers, civil society members and representatives from local communities.

The principles and tools of public participation in budgeting process were the topics of dicussions  at the two seminars on “Public Participation in Budgeting Process on Local Level” held in Cherkassy city on January 20-21 and in Vinnitsa city on January 22-23, 2015.
 
The seminars were organised in the framework of the Polish-Ukrainian Cooperation Foundation PAUCI Project entitled "Performance budgets in Cherkasy and Vinnitsa - support for good governance and financial transparency of local governments in Ukraine".
 

The interdisciplinary project,  “GisNS - Development of Online Geodata Portal of Cultural Heritage in Novi Sad” was successfully concluded on 22-23 January 2015 in Novi Sad, Serbia.

Countering youth unemployment in the northern part of Bosnia and Herzegovina (40%) is high on the agenda of  the Municipality of Gradiška. It is developing a new ICT business incubator, which aims at meeting the needs of young entrepreneurs for infrastructural, technical/education and ICT services for supporting the main economic branches in the region: agriculture and commerce.

The implementation of the Project PACKSENSOR, dedicated to sustainable food packaging and monitoring in South Serbia, officially started with a kick-off meeting in Leskovac on 14-15 January 2015.

The project, fully titled PACKSENSOR - The impact of the controlled atmosphere on quality and safety of the close-seal-packaged food applied in the SMEs of South Serbia, aims to provide solutions for monitoring the influence of packaging on food safety, currently not practiced by local firms due to the lack of trained personnel and proper equipment.

Nearly two decades after the end of the conflict in former Yugoslavia, Bosnia-Herzegovina remains one of the world's most mine contaminated countries with an estimated 2.5% of its territory at risk. The May floods have complicated the situation further, potentially contaminating the already cleared fields.

In order to further strengthen economic and social development in its non-EU members, the CEI is promoting synergies between the EU-funded project ener2i and the KEP AUSTRIA Project Innovation stimulation for Moldovan SMEs in the field of energy efficiency and renewable energies (CEI-ener2i-MD) promoted by the Austrian Centre for Social Innovation (ZSI).
 

Within the KEP AUSTRIA Call 2014, four project proposals were approved by the CEI Committee of National Coordinators in October 2014 with a total CEI grant amounting to 186.000 EUR and a total project cost of 381.309 EUR. These activities - selected among 117 applications which have undergone a two-step evaluation procedure - have recently started their implementation phase:
 

In the framework of the project “Renewable Energy Knowledge and Technology Transfer in Albania and in Bosnia–Herzegovina”, an awareness campaign for communities and municipalities has been launched in Albania, focusing on energy conservation, renewable energy and environmental protection.
 

The CEI Fund at the EBRD, entirely contributed by Italy, has approved nine projects in the framework of the CEI Know-How Exchange Programme (KEP ITALY) to be co-financed with 260.000 EUR, out of 70 submitted proposals. The selected projects support the alignment of the non-EU CEI Member States with European and international standards by transferring high-level know-how and expertise.

The interest in renewable sources is strong amongst Ukrainian stakeholders, especially thanks to the current political and consequent energy crisis. In particular, biomass-based heating systems are seen as an attractive alternative to natural gas supplies from Russia.

The Polish-Ukrainian Cooperation Foundation PAUCI conducted a training course on performance-based programme budgeting as a tool for good governance and financial transparency in Kyiv on 16-17 October, 2014.
 

A publication on Science for Cultural Heritage promoted by the Association AIS3 (Association of Serbian and Italian Scientists and Scholars) includes a chapter dedicated to the KEP Italy Project on Development of Online Geodata Portal of Cultural Heritage in Novi Sad.
 

Fifteen selected participants from the University of Tirana, the Montenegrin Seismological Centre and Serbian Geophysics Association are participating in the tailor-made “ training for trainers” organised by the Italian Institute for Oceanography and Experimental Geophysics (OGS), taking place in Trieste on 13-17 October 2014.

The four-month project “On the Job Training in Humanitarian Demining and Mine Risk Education (MRE)”, which started on 11 October 2014 in Bihac (BiH), aims at improving the local capacity in the demining and Mine Risk Education sector, in order to support the local NGO Mine Detecting Dog Center (MDDC).
 

The National Petroleum Committee of Serbia (NPCS) presented the results of the project “Implementation of Directive 2009/28/EC in the Field of Biofuels and Transport in the Republic of Serbia - Transfer of Best Practices” (BIOGOS) at the VIII International Forum for Clean Energy Technologies on 30 September - 1 October 2014 in Novi Sad.

The project “Public Accountants Certification Training” aims to improve public accounting capacities by introducing international accounting standards and best practices to up to 40 students in 2014-2015, with a possibility of extending the activities to 2015-2016. A training of three local trainers per module is also envisioned. The opening event took place on 18 September 2014 in Skopje. 
 

As part of the project Smallholders Farmers’ Access to Markets in Eastern and Northern Bosnia-Herzegovina and Northern Albania, a workshop and a roundtable were organised in the framework of the International Plumb Fair in Gradačac (Northern Bosnia and Herzegovina). The Fair - on 27-30 August this year - is the biggest scientific and economic event related to plumbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The target audience were plumb producers and organisations creating a business environment.

On 16 - 22 July 2014, farmers from Bratunac, Srebrenica and Milici were trained on which measures to be applied for saving their production, heavily damaged by the recent floods. Meanwhile, 16 representatives from 10 smallholder farmer’s organizations from Posavina area attended a training on 21 July focused on improving their management skills.