CATALYST project: Establishing a United Centre of Vocational Excellence in 5 countries | Kick-off meeting in Skopje, North Macedonia

On the 19th and 20th of September 2022, the Kick-off meeting of the ERASMUS+ CATALYST project took place in Skopje, North Macedonia. Athens University of Economics and Business was represented by Ms Lydia Papadaki (PhDc at AUEB). In this meeting, the partners have presented the progress both on the field and desk research work, which are part of WP2 “Setting the scene toward the Enable & Inspire concept: Positioning the CATALYST CoVEs”, led by AUEB. Also, they discussed the preparation of the upcoming roundtables in each of the 5 partner countries, issues on project management and quality assurance as well as communication and dissemination activities.

The project seeks the establishment of a united CATALYST Centre of Vocational Excellence (CoVE) in 5 countries to give support, create an educational offer to tackle personal and organisational development and embrace transformation in SMEs, enabling and inspiring them to re-think and re-design their business models, co-creating and sharing between educational and business organisations.

Among others, the project aims at:

• Establishing 5 COVEs and CATALYST Network anchored in the EU cove ecosystem;
• Developing 70 VET courses for up-skilling professionals and students;
• Co-creating and disseminating applied knowledge; and
• Creating a CATALYST platform which will unite all CoVEs on a European level.

Research Laboratory on Socio-Economic and Environmental Sustainability (ReSEES) at Athens University of Economics and Business is participating in ERASMUS+ CATALYST project. The Principal Investigator (PI) is Prof. Koundouri and members of the team are: Dr Akinsete and Lydia Papadaki