The UNITA project took an important step in strengthening relations with its partners, with the First Meeting and Workshop of the Advisory Council. The event took place on April 13, with 65 participants in a work session that exceeded expectations.
The Advisory Council is a central entity in UNITA’s participatory governance, directly related to its decision-making and operational bodies. The structure includes entities linked to the consortium’s purposes and is intended to present ideas, recommendations, creative solutions and suggestions for actions that contribute to achieving the project’s objectives. The intention of the meeting was to dialogue in order to understand how the participation of associated partners can be useful for the consortium and for themselves, in a win-win perspective.
The First Meeting and Workshop of the Advisory Council was divided into two parts. The girst one included the presentation of UNITA, by Mario Giacobini, from Universita degli Studi di Torino, and of the consortium’s expectations regarding the Advisory Council, by Francisco Beltran. After these introductory parts, Ernesto Exposito (UPPA) and Laurence Vignollet (USMB) – invited the participants to fill in an interactive padlet, which resulted in a great session of brainstorming. That led to complex and “on point” ideas, which only meant one thing: the confirmation that the associated partners believe in the UNITA project as much as the alliance’s universities.
The second part of the meeting was a more interactive one: the associated partners were divided into two work-groups according to their fore mentioned choice filled in the form they were given previously. They had to choose between: Challenge 1: Exchanges between academia and private or public entities; or Challenge 2: The role of linguistic diversity in the cross-border region.
After the discussion of both groups, the final conclusions underlined the need for microcredentials future debates, the importance to develop entrepreneurship skills for our students, the continuity of our Think Tank- the Advisory Council, raising awareness of the fact that intercomprehension is the tool which brings us all together, the need for a pedagogical and entrepreneurial approach to intercomprehension, and a strong collaboration strategy between us and our associated partners. The next meetings were established to take place in late June 2021.
