Štip, Macedonia – With the organization of the first activity- the kickoff meeting held in Stip, RM from 16-18 October 2015, the Agri Base project – “Boosting Adults System Education In Agriculture” marked its start. This project is granted within the Erasmus + K2 Action Strategic Partnerships for Adult Education and will be realized in the period from October 2015 to October 2017.
The consortium consists of 10 institutions: OCULL” Vanco Prke” Stip, R Macedonia (coordinator), University of East Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, University of Foggia, Italy, Polytechnic University of Cartagena, Spain, University “1 Decembrie 1918” Alba Iulia, Romania, Technical University of Varna, Bulgaria, Estonian Academy for Life Sciences, Estonia, Cukurova University, Turkey, College Illyria, Kosovo and Western Balkans Institute, Serbia. The project consortium was chosen according to the similarities in the project issues the project tackles, and in particular the similarities regarding LLL in agriculture, regional positioning and the expertise of the participants. The main objective of this consortium is to improve the system of adult education in the field of agriculture and rural development through strengthening the competences of the agricultural experts. This will be achieved by developing of training materials in the field of Agro-management, English for Agricultural Purposes and ICT which will be available on-line on the e-platform that is going to be created for this purpose. Apart of this, an on-field study analyses will be made and webinars will be organized on a national level. At least 3000 agricultural adult educators and practitioners in 10 countries will be reached by the activities of this project and will benefit from its results.
During the kickoff meeting in Stip, the project participants agreed upon the coordination of the project activities and discussed the significant project issues for an efficient project implementation. The Agri Base project consortium was welcomed by the Mayor of the Municipality of Stip, Prim.dr Ilco Zahariev, who emphasized the need and importance of this project for the whole region, and they also visited the facilities of the agro-farm “Eko Oaza Samandov” and the antique city of Bargala near Stip. The next in the set of activities is a workshop on preparation of the on-field comparative analyses in all the ten countries.