Welcome to the 3rd part of blog series – Step-by-step tips based on successful cases – we have been releasing since the beginning of new year! In this part, we will resume from the last weeks’ blog – Thinking About Writing an Erasmus+ KA2 Proposal Part 2 – and continue our tips based on the respective sections and fields to fill in on a KA2 proposal form.

9. Developing a Catchy Project Description

There are five different fields to fill in under the main title of ‘Description of the Project’ but the most important one is the first field where you will define the whole idea of the project. In most cases, this is the only field that max. 5000 characters is not enough 🙂 

Starting from the first field, elaborate on;

• Why this project is needed in your and other countries and/or European level. Refer to specific statistics, findings of reports to support the need you are addressing.
• The solution you propose and expected impact at all levels in line with the Programme aims and objectives.
• Justification of transnational structure. You can create the necessary justification with the help your partners. They can provide valuable and relevant insights why this project should be implemented in their country.
• The innovativeness and complementarity of previous projects that the partners are previously / currently involved in. Give short information about these projects, which can be either implemented at national or European scale, by collecting this information from the partners. Pay attention to that the borderline between these projects and your project is clear enough.
• Why you have chosen the present partners. What complementary expertise they have to accomplish the project aims and objectives. Give specific expertise information in one paragraph for each partner.
• Tasks and responsibilities of each partner in the project. Start with mentioning about the common roles in project management and implementation and give specific role description precisely, but covering all specific roles in management, output development, dissemination and quality monitoring. This field is better to be filled in after later sections are complete.
• Results. With results, it is meant everything that can be justified with tangible proofs produced / organised in the project; intellectual outputs, events, trainings, meetings, etc. Give specific but concise details about the expected outcomes, with numbers and titles, and refer to the later sections where all are going to be more elaborated.

10. Describing Participants

With participants, it is generally meant your target groups that you are going to involve in different research, training and events. You can also add other participants in relevant project management and implementation, incl. transnational project meetings, who are internal staff of project partners. Try to give as much as specific information about who your participants are, how you are going to select and involve them in each activity.

For instance: If you are developing intellectual outputs, then your participants in the development of these will be internal experts of each partner and the partners will be responsible for their appointment to the activity. If you are organising multiplier events, your participants will be target groups and stakeholders and the partners will exploit their existing networks will be exploited to involve satisfactory numbers (specified in relevant sections on the form).

Participants with fewer opportunities – if you have such participants who are in a more disadvantaged position, such as people with disabilities, women with children, etc., you need to justify that you will fully support them to fully engage in the planned activities.

For instance: If you are organising classroom trainings for disabled people, you need to give details about how you are going to select venues with highest accessibility.

In the participants section, there is also a field asking for information about other participants who will benefit from the project without receiving a specific grant. These persons are the participants to the project activities like; research, training, multiplier events, etc., not project management or output development, those who do not directly receive money from the project but still benefit from it. Try to be more specific by describing each group and give number of expected participants in each partner country.

11. Preparation Activities

In this section, you are asked to give details about the initial stage of the project, in case it is approved by your national agency. Think in detail about every respect – what are you going to do now? In administrative respect; you will need to notify your partners about the approval, start dissemination plans, etc. More importantly, think about the first implementation activity / intellectual output, what should be done in preparation? Are you going to star involving participants? Mention all about these respectively and in bullet points.

12. Project Management and Implementation – Drawing everything together

There are 9 fields to be filled in under Project Management and Implementation Section, all of them are to understand if your project have its feet on the ground. Starting from the first field;

Starting from the first field, summarize clearly;

• The methodology you intend to carry out for communication and cooperation among partners and with stakeholders. Strategy for financial, quality and dissemination throughout the project.
• The methodology you intend to carry out for intellectual outputs, training activities and multiplier events after you have elaborated in the later sections in a way casting them in relevant phases.
• The details about transnational project meetings as required. Normally, there should be two meetings in a year, each to be organised in a different partner country with the condition of first one to be organised in the applicant’s country.
• Strategy for communication and cooperation with partners. Use of common tools for daily correspondence, use of document exchange platforms, etc.
• Methods for ensuring proper budget and time management. Use of methods for proper financial reporting mechanisms and continuous tracking over the project Gantt Chart, applicable to whole partnership.
• Plans for quality monitoring. Details about how you are going to assess the quality of project management, activities and outputs. A clear strategy for each should exist with clear indicators. For instance: The indicator for the satisfaction of participants to a multiplier event should be e.g. average %60 ‘highly satisfactory’ rate received from the satisfaction surveys filled in after the event.
• Risks associated with the project. Give details about the risks foreseen (e.g. less number of participants than expected) and what your plans are to handle them (e.g. design of a proper reach out strategy and continuous support)

13. Intellectual Outputs

This part is devoted to activities leading to tangible results created in collaboration of partnership and take up the most of project while in general leading to highest budget item (depending on the categories of participating countries) in the whole project budget. The ideal number of outputs is highly associated with the length of project and magnitude of tasks and responsibilities to be executed. In a two year project, it is logical to develop at most 4 intellectual outputs, they can consist of e.g. one report, one guide, one pilot training curriculum / programme and a distance learning platform, each to be led by an expert partner with the contribution of all or most of others. An equal sharing of tasks and responsibilities should be pursued.

For each intellectual output; give details (the most you can) about the output (why it is needed, for whom, what it contains, in which form, etc.) and the clear steps in its development process (who does what).

14. Multiplier Events: Time to disseminate the project

Dissemination must be the major and ongoing activity in any kind of EU funded projects. In KA2 projects, there is also a possibility to propose multiplier events which can only be proposed if the project is producing intellectual outputs (as guided on the proposal form). Because the main purpose of these events should be disseminating the project and the outputs produced. In principle, one multiplier event should be organised in each participating country and a final conference will help creating a larger impact in the country where the project leader is located. The details of the main purpose, number of people expected which determines the budget for these activities, profile of participants should be explained in each event description.

15. Learning / Teaching / Training Activities

Although it is not obligatory to organise a short and long term training activity, it is recommended to propose at least one activity in order to increase the impact that the project is going to create. One important point is that these activities cannot be organised on national basis but transnational basis, with the participation of specific number of learners / staff getting together in a partner country. There are specific types of training activities and participants that are eligible different types of KA2 projects. For this specific information please refer to pages 113 and 293 of the Programme Guide [1].

If you and your partners are not in a position to host long term training activities, it is logical to organise a short term activity, ideally a 5-day activity. In addition to the eligibility criteria, participants should also be fluent in English (as the courses will be provided in English) and 3-4 participants from each country would be enough to create a class. As a solution to language problem, you can use Linguistic Support, which is asked in the budget section.

For instance: You have developed an innovative training curriculum with your partners and you want to test it and see how it works in classroom with students from each country. You can organise a transnational training event for 5 days in a partner country, where learners and trainers from partner countries come together and realise the training programme.

If you want to talk about any support we may provide in your Strategic Partnership initiatives this year, please contact us at info@makroconsult.com.tr.

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Click to see the Final Part of the blog series.

By Merve Gül Barut, Consultant

[1] European Commission, Erasmus+ Programme Guide, Version 1 (2018): 25/10/2017