Here you will find text and presentation (power point) to the main part of the start-up seminar. This information is in English.
Click here to download presentation from the NORPART start-up seminar, first part.
Script for the NORPART seminar 24.03.22: Ingvild
2 Welcome to you all. We have primarily invited the project coordinators and administrators, but we are also happy to see that some of the partners are joining us. We hope this will be useful for you. We will keep this seminar in English, to not exclude any of our participants.
I will start by introducing the members of the NORPART team. I am Ingvild Hope, and for now the coordinator of NORPART. I have with me Benedikte Fjellanger Vardøy, who will walk you through some of the practical sides of managing the projects. Lene Kristin Hansen will guide you on how to manage the finances. And then we have the experts, Hilde Granås Kjøstvedt and Camilla Tetler, they are taking care of the chat, where you can post you questions as we go along with the program. Some of the questions will be saved for the final discussion, at the end of the program.
In addition to the NORPART team, we are pleased and grateful that Charlotte Sletten Bjorå from University of Oslo, and Ingeborg Nordbø from University of South-Eastern Norway have taken the time to share some of their experiences as NORPART project coordinators. We are looking forward to that.
Since there are 28 new projects, we cannot introduce you all. We are planning a larger event in September, in Oslo, where we can meet and have more time to get to know each other. I will come back to that.
The meeting is recorded and made available for all later.
3 The total portfolio: 75 active projects. Projects that include partner institutions in 31 of the 40 NORPART partner countries across Asia, Africa and Latin America
4 The application round. Every application was assessed by a team of three evaluator. We tried to balance the teams so that we had people with competence from the education sector both in the global north and in the global south. It was a challenging process, with many excellent applications.
5 Here we see the number of projects the institutions received.
6 And this gives an indication of how many institutions that are involved and in which country. 76 in total, and this is maybe not an exact number.
7 Map. 30, overlap.
8 This is just to give an overview over the many different disciplines covered in this portfolio. Here at the directorate, we are both proud and impressed of the projects that received funding in 2021. We enclosed a list with an overview of the 28 projects, including a small summary, contact information to the project coordinator and partner institutions in the project. We do hope that you will find the time to study this list and see if there are potential for cooperation and knowledge sharing. We can see a lot of potential here, and encourage you do the same. We also challenge and encourage you to really prioritize dissemination and communication activities, so that your results and successes can be shared and used by many. Since we emphasis student activities in NORPART, we have looked at the number of mobilites planned:
9 Expected results at a glance:
incoming students
10 Expected results at a glance:
outgoing students
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12 We have to mention challenges: It is a fact that many projects will struggle with mobility due to the ongoing pandemic. Unfortunately, we have several serious conflicts and wars going on, that affects us all. For NORPART, the conflicts in Ethiopia are affecting many of our projects, both in the new portfolio and in the former. Signals we have received from The Norwegian Directorate of Immigration are not reassuring, it seems like there will be no uptake of students from Ethiopia in 2022.
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Introduction:
Hello. My name is Benedikte Vardøy, I am an adviser at the Directorate for Higher Education and Research and I also work with NORPART.
As Ingvild’s presentation shows, the portfolio that you are part of, consists of a range of projects, each with its own, individual goals. But however different they are, your projects are united by the fact that they are relevant to the overall aim and objectives of NORPART. I hope this fact can inspire you. We hope that NORPART will help you fulfil the objectives of each project, while simultaneously fulfilling the objectives of NORPART.
When we gather for a physical start-up meeting later this year you will have time for proper discussions with your peers.
In this part of the presentation, we will go through background documents and technical infrastructure.
The most important documents for your project include the Contract, the NORPART Programme document, and the 2021 Call for application. But first I will show you some glimpses of Espresso.
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Espresso:
Espresso is our application and reporting system. In Espresso you can see the documents that are connected to your projects and the information about your project.
You will use Espresso to submit your annual reports. The first report is due by 1 March next year. You might also use Espresso before that, for example to update or check the information that we have registered on your project.
You log in to Espresso on https://espresso.diku.no.
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Under My projects you will find the projects that you have access to.
When you click on the project number and project title in blue, you will see the Project overview with details on your project. You will see three tabs: Project, Documents and Access.
Under the tab Project you can update information on the project coordinators.
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Under Documents you see the documents on your project and their status. You can also import attachments.
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Under Access you can give write or read access to registered users. (you may give write access to up to four persons, and read access to as many as you like)
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Annual reports will appear under “My tasks” when they are open for editing.
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In the Annual report you will report on:
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Programme document
I will now briefly mention the documents that are relevant for this portfolio.
In the programme document you can find background information about NORPART. It can be useful to consult the programme document, and particularly the result framework, when you submit annual reports.
Call for applications
The call for applications describes specific requirements for this NORPART portfolio.
This document contains the Budget guidelines, which, together with the contract, outlines how your funds can be spent.
Please consult the Call for applications when you want to make changes to the project.
For those of you who had NORPART projects before, please note that there might be changes from previous calls.
Contract:
The contract describes your rights and obligations. Please read it carefully.
In the first part of the contract you find conditions for the NORPART portfolio.
In the second part you find general conditions with rights and obligations for projects funded by the Directorate.
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Although the budget model for this portfolio is flexible, there are some limitations which can be found in the contract.
The contract outlines details for various circumstances.
For example, please note that special conditions apply when funds are transferred from the Institution in Norway to a third party, as described in Article 6 in the Contract.
Many of you wish to transfer parts of the funds to institutions in the South. This is possible.
As written in the contract, the Institution in Norway must ensure that the recipients of such transfers undertake to provide it with sufficient documentation to comply with its accounting and reporting obligations under the Contract.
If any part of the funds transferred to such institutions is lost, misappropriated or otherwise used for purposes other than implementation of the Project, the Institution in Norway will be liable to cover the loss unless it can document that all reasonable steps have been taken to avoid such misuse of the Funds.
Please also note that the funds for full degree MA scholarships are earmarked funds which should be accounted for separately. Transfers of these funds to other activities is not possible.
The project document is part of the contract, which means that the funds that you receive for should cover expenses for activities that you describe in the project document. When you handed in your project document, you also wrote an implementation plan. It is normal for this plan to be slightly adjusted during the project period. Please notify us about changes.
Please note that you may be subject to controls by the Auditor General at any time, as described in Article 4 in the contract. HK-dir may carry out random audit checks without any prior notice.