Water’s Experts: in Portugal for the Kick-off Meeting of the project

On 3 and 4 September 2022 the Water’s Experts project partners met in Porto (Portugal) to officially start the project activities. The partner Geoclube – Associação Juvenil kindly welcomed the consortium to their office in Rio Tinto, municipality of Gondomar. The two-day event has been a valuable opportunity for the project partners to get to know each other and coordinate together to set the next step of the project. 

On the first day, the consortium discussed and defined some important aspects of Water’s Experts, such as the project goals and activities to put in place, the communication and dissemination strategy, and the training course contents. The second day of the meeting was devoted to visiting the so-called Pavilion of Water, in Porto, an interesting small-scale project that aims to raise people’s attention on the issues of water scarcity and pollution of the oceans. Through an exciting trip in the Pavilion, the project partners had the chance to reflect on water issues and the importance of water resources, collecting new ideas and insights for our project. Moreover, Carlos Ferreira, the Geoclube project manager, guided the project partners in a naturalistic tour to visit the city of Rio Tinto, explaining some of the Rio Tinto river characteristics and telling interesting stories about the city’s culture and natural resources management.

From a general perspective, the Water’s Experts project aims to adequate school studies to the job market needs, using training methods which are new, practical and more relevant for the work contest. On the other hand, the project’s goal is to raise awareness on climate change adaptation, underlining the importance and the role of water resources.

The leading organization Paese dell’Acqua was represented in the meeting by the president Marco Iamiceli and the vice president Carmine Finelli. The Collective for a European Civic Service was represented by Francesco Orlando and Anaïs Lamotte, and ALDA – European Association for Local Democracy was represented by Cristina Mariani and Virginia Stimilli (online), while the partner Sreten Koceski, director of Community Development Institute Macedonia, participated online.

The Kick-off Meeting represented an important moment of the project, in order to set the following steps. In the upcoming months, the partners will involve schools interested in the project activities and identify students willing to take part in the training course. 

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