Educational Institutions for Development – Down to Earth and Close to People (International Conference Know-How3000)

Between the 10th and 12th of June 2014, Vienna hosted the international conference with the title “Educational Institutions – Down to Earth and Close to People” organised by Horizont3000, the lead agency of TRIALOG.

The conference took place in the context of a series of regional conferences and workshops aimed at enhancing knowledge management, knowledge transfer and capacity building among Horizont3000 partners. The three-days conference provided a wonderful opportunity to explore the way in which universities both in Northern and Southern countries are contributing to a more just and sustainable development in Southern countries.

Over the past years, as a response to the need to engage with societal demands and link universities with their socio-economic context, a number of universities worldwide have added a third mission to their traditional missions of teaching and research, to include activities that facilitate their engagement with social, economic, environmental and cultural dimensions of capacity building. The conference can be thus seen as part of a global debate around the third mission of universities.

Apart from the Horizont3000 partner organisations in the South (Brasil, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Papua New Guinea, Uganda), the conference was attended by partners of the TRIALOG project in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe. The interactive methodology of the conference has provided representatives of universities from Czech Republic, Lithuania, Slovenia, as well as representatives of CSOs in Croatia, Cyprus, Malta, and Estonia working on development issues with the opportunity to network with and gain new insights from universities and organisations working in the South, therefore laying the foundations for future exchanges and partnerships.

More information on the experiences presented and background information on the conference can be found here.

Photo courtesy of HORIZONT3000: conference participants during a working group session.


Information provided by Iulia Socea, TRIALOG