Cross-border Cooperation and Networking through e-learning and Career Development

Concerning all mentioned issues above, with overall aim to strengthen territorial cohesion of the CB region, project proposal contains activities which are designed to link and network CB region on institutional and educational level, exchange experience and jointly increase economic syner. Proposed project activities and networking of different types of institutions, will help to improve the capacity to make use of common regional potential for improving regional well being. Dealing with huge procent of unemployement in the cross border region, partner institutions will create career advising points which will help to fill the gap between labor market supply and demands. Based on market needs, trough exchange of best practise and know-how, partners will improve their institutional content by exchanging curriculas and thus impact on enriching undeveloped crossborder area. Since communication in the CB region is the key factor for succesful cooperation at all levels, distance learning system was created in the form of online tandem learning course of Serbian and Bulgarian languages. Beside education, development of CB region is conditioned with growth of small and medium enterpreneurship and their participating at the CB region market. This is why it is neccesary to educate SMEs about legislative and strenghts for business opportunities in neighbour country, and thus provide them to be competitivenes for participation in the joint EU market.

The project envisioned and achieved the following results: - 3 mutual linkages between different institutions have been created and 2 joint databases built; - Jointly developed 4 management plans and 2 researches; - 3 education/business partnerships established and 2 marketing initiatives completed; - 90 SMEs and over 550 people have been involved in project activities; - 163 people have been trained trough 7 management and job-related training courses; - 2 Career advising points have been established (in Nis and Kyustendil); - A web platform for 2 on-line language courses has been created: http://www.safety.ni.ac.rs/CCN/ The project was successfully completed in April 2014.