Opinions & Interviews
MOST project to expand interpersonal ties between specialists in Belarus, European Union
GOMEL, 1 December (BelTA) – The MOST project will allow expanding interpersonal ties between specialists in Belarus and the European Union, BelTA learned from Frank Baumann, Director of the Goethe Institute in Minsk, during the project’s presentation at premises of the Gomel Oblast Executive Committee on 1 December.
Frank Baumann remarked that the project had been considered for a long time, however, the European Union had been waiting for an opportune time. “It is very important that the project has not been imported. Instead it has been developed in association with the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The MOST project will allow establishing or expanding the existing interpersonal contacts, thus helping improve mutual understanding between specialists of different countries,” he said.
The full title of the project is Mobile Scheme for Targeted People-to-People Contacts. The organizations in charge of carrying out the project are the Goethe Institute in Minsk and the British Council. The Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the representative office of the European Union in Belarus will provide overall supervision of the project.
According to Dr. Klaus Baier, the head of the team, as part of the project’s implementation plans have been made to finance short trips for 1,500 representatives of Belarus (civil servants, scientists, students, representatives of public associations and the private sector) to 28 countries of the European Union by the end of 2017. Meanwhile, representatives of the European Union will be able to come to Belarus for international events, on-the-job training, for sharing the best practices and establishing ties in various spheres. The program’s budget is close to €5 million.
Experts and the supervising committee will sort through applications to organize the relevant events. It will take 2-3 months to process an application. A number of factors will be taken into account by the decision-makers, including the usefulness and advisability of the trip for the applying organization or the country as a whole. Requirements for the applications are sufficiently high. Since mid-September 2015, when the MOST project was officially presented in Belarus, the team has approved 11 individual applications and four collective ones. Three groups have already been to Portugal, Germany, and Poland. The next group will travel to the UK for sharing the best practices.
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