In case there was any doubt of our ability and drive we now have a global profile! The B!G Idea has a profile on Access Europe which is a support programme for Irish organisations to access EU funds. It is funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and delivered by The Wheel. So far, so impressive.
The EU provides so many opportunities to its member states but it’s not always easy to navigate these opportunities or to make head nor tail of them! Most organisations don’t have the time or capacity to invest in searching for opportunities that would suit their organisation or community.
This is where Access Europe rides in like a knight in shining armour. The first phase of the project which ran from 2014-2017 was so successful that The Department of Foreign Affairs stepped in to partner with The Wheel in 2020 to deliver a new and improved programme.
The main objectives of Access Europe are:
Awareness – raising awareness of the value of strategic involvement in EU programmes and providing information on EU funding opportunities.
Capacity – build the capacity of Irish civil society organisations to apply for, win and manage funding.
Support – support the development of partnerships and create networks
In our profile we focus on active citizenship, education and training, employment and job creation, mental health, social inclusion and young people.
We discuss our EU project experience to date which is the BANG project that we are doing with KAOS Pilots (Denmark), Politecnico DI Milano (Italy), High School of Agrinio (Greece) and Secondary School of Agriculture and Forestry Vinkovci (Croatia) and we talk about the digital platform that we are building together that EU teachers will be able to access to support critical and creative thinking in the classroom.
We also discuss how European partnerships would offer us the opportunity to develop and share our knowledge in an international environment.
We lay out our strengths in full which are of course too many to mention here but which include the fact that we have access to students with a high engagement rate in both rural and urban settings; we have expertise in developing creative exercises for a hybrid and digital learning environment and that we are an organisation of doers, mover and shakers who love working collaboratively with our stakeholders.
As always we are excited about the future and where it will take us and we believe that Access Europe might be the stepping stone we need to open up a whole new field of opportunities.
To find out more about Access Europe click on the link below.
