January 25, 2025
The MILAGRO Project Consortium Meeting was held at the University Library on January 23rd and 24th in Belgrade. The meeting was attended by the representatives of all project participants, who were joined on the second day of the meeting by local partners from Serbia.
Participants:
NACU – Fiora Biagi, Elena Cellai, Penelope Giorgi
UCU – Tatiana Bruni
UBSM – Aleksandar Jerkov, Vasilije Milnovic, Dragana Stolic, Sladjana Mijajlovic, (Administrative), Matea Milosevic (Creator of Visual Identity), Dusan Gavrilovic (IT expert)
SIS INTERCULTURAL STUDY ABROAD – Lavinia Bracci
COMMISSIONER FOR PROTECTION OF EQUALITY – Bogdan Banjac (only the second day)
TERRAFORMING – Misko Stanisic (online) (only the second day)
NGO ATINA – Lidija Djordjevic, Milan Aleksic (only the second day)
Below are all the details of the meeting agenda items.
January 23, 2025, Thursday (14.30-18.00)
Professor Jerkov welcomes partners at UBSM.
Elena Cellai introduces the main topics to be discussed during the meeting and informs participants that, according to latest news, any change from the Project Description of Action (DoA) as approved in the Grant Agreement during the project implementation, is supposed to be communicated to the project’s P.O.
WP2 – Local Assemblies
Two Local Assemblies must be planned and organized in the second semester of the project, until June 2025.
In Siena, the next LAs will take place on February 6, at the Vocational High School “G. Caselli” and on February 10, at the next “Tavolo Istituzionale” organized by the Archbishop of Siena, Cardinal Augusto Paolo Lojudice. Following LAs are supposed to happen involving other local associations, such as students’ associations, sport clubs, libraries.
In Belgrade, the next LAs will take place in March and May: the first one will involve foreign students in Serbia, while the second one will involve sport clubs or the Political Sciences Department of the University Library.
In Utrecht, the next LAs will take place in March and June.
WP3 – Becoming democratic citizens (Task 3.2)
Fiora Biagi informs about the events held so far, underlining the fact that participants are numerous but majority of them are male refugees; therefore, there is a need to involve the local community more and balance gender participation: NACU is working in this direction.
NACU partners also explain that competence evaluation, assessed so far with written questionnaires, will undergo some changes: since the refugee target group is now composed mainly of illiterate people, in the second part of the scheduled events competence assessment will be carried out through focus groups: in detail, there will be two focus groups, one in the next few weeks and the other one at a final stage, after the end of the series of forthcoming meetings.
UCU and UBSM are free to select the assessment tool which is more suitable for them.
WP3 activities at UBSM will start in February and will last until June: 2 meetings per month are scheduled and will be held by the Commissioner for Protection of Equality and NGOs working with migrants.
WP3 activities will start in February or March at last, in Utrecht.
In the Description of Action (DoA) Task 3.2 runs from M5 (October 2024) to M12 (May 2025) with meetings ideally twice a week for one hour. However, during the project implementation, it has appeared clear that many members of the target groups have very busy agendas since they either work, volunteer and/or study, and weekly meetings have proven unfeasible to plan. Instead, monthly meetings have appeared much more manageable. Therefore, it seems wise to extend task 3.2 duration until M18. Consequently, it seems reasonable to ask the PO for the postponement of Deliverable 3.1, which is the development of an app to guide target groups through intercultural themes in digital spaces (scheduled for May 31), that derives from the inputs collected, elicited or inspired by Task 3.2. encounters.
Deliverable 3.2, i.e. the publication of guidelines for intercultural safe spaces where RFCDC and DCE related topics are discussed, is kept for M12 (May 31).
WP7 – Website and Observatory
The MILAGRO website is ready and contains almost all the activities completed so far (NACU must update UBSM with news and information about the most recent activities). On the website homepage, links to social media profiles of the project will be added only when the social media profiles are ready and functioning.
NACU, UBSM and UCU must appoint the persons who will be content creators for the social media profiles. UBSM will be in charge of the MILAGRO Facebook page.
The project must be presented and described on the partners’ websites, which will have a link to the project’s website itself.
The website deliverable (D 7.1) deadline is January 31: a document must be uploaded on the EU portal containing a short description of the website, the link to it and a few screenshots of it.
As for the Observatory, the geovisual map page is done and working, but, it will be a work in progress, of course. Some organizations are still to be transferred from the shared Excel file to the web page. The partners agree on adding the numbers of migrants in each location (to be updated by definite deadlines) and on taking into consideration only institutions and NGOs (excluding other types of associations). Tatiana Bruni suggests and shares a website that could be used as a model, she also suggests that some captions on the page of the geovisual map could be of help.
As for UCU interns to be hosted in Belgrade, a suitable time could be June 2025; their job still needs to be defined. Tatiana Bruni will have a call ready soon at UCU to select the two interns.
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January 24, 2025, Friday (10.30-14.00)
WP3 – Online Coaching in Belgrade and Siena (Task 3.3)
This activity will be organized by the Online Coaching Centre in Utrecht (https://occ.sites.uu.nl/en/) and will start in March. It is a two-week intensive course and will take place separately in Belgrade and in Siena. It is supposed to happen in person, on site, but there is a possibility of splitting it into two parts: the first theoretical section online and the second one in person. The activity will be held in English. In the GANTT diagram of the Description of Action, Task 3.3. runs from M10 (March 2025) to M15 (August 2025). Nevertheless, the deadline for the activities event will be suggested to the PO for an extension until December (M19) to give the trainers a more feasible timeframe to arrange the onsite courses in Siena and Belgrade, considering that the period in July and August will coincide with the Summer Breaks (July at UCU, August at NACU and USBM).
A page will be open on the project’s website for people to enroll.
Connected to this activity, there is the publication of a Handbook (Deliverable 3.3), which contains the materials of the training; the foreseen deadline for this deliverable (M12 – May 31st) is kept, since it is preliminary to the administration of the training.
Tatiana Bruni suggests that a working group is set up to organize the training: partners will appoint a person in their staff that will be a part of the working group.
WP3 – Training Intercultural mediation (Task 3.4)
The activities for this task have already started and are in progress. Still, materials and signatures are to be prepared in order for these activities to be properly documented.
Deliverable 3.4, which is the creation of a refugee-led association, is already being started and the foreseen deadline (May 2026, M24) is confirmed.
Also, Deliverable 3.5 (Training syllabus/handbook with theoretical readings and reflective activities for the cultural mediation training) maintains its deadline at the end of the project (M24).
WP4 – Paths of life
UCU will start the “Storytelling” activities on February 17: 5 sessions (once a week for 5 weeks) with 10-15 participants are scheduled.
UBSM, in collaboration with local partners, will start their activities in April. “Everything will be fine” and “Past Migrations under the blue light of luminescence” will be carried out by Terraforming NGO, while “Paths to knowledge” will be carried out by UBSM. All the activities will be in the format of workshops.
Deliverable 4.1 (Video pills) maintains its deadline for the moment (May 31st).
Task 4.2, planned to end in M9 (February 2025), would benefit from some postponement until M15 to make the most of the Spring and Summer months for a better logistic organization of the activities.
WP5 – Initial plans for Summer Camps
NACU informs that the Summer camp will take place in the first 10-15 days of July 2025. In order to promote it and involve the local community as much as possible, the Municipality of Siena will be asked to participate in the promotion of the event.
At UBSM, the Summer Camp will take place in June, and it will include a sport event (cricket match); also, Terraforming will participate in the Summer Camp events.
At UCU, the Summer Camp will last 3 days, instead of 5, and it will probably take place at the end of May.
WP6 – One-off Events Schedule
NACU will contact people in Brussels as soon as possible to start planning the time and place for the event.
UBSM will let the partners know what conferences may be suitable for the event.
Next Meetings and other business
Next online Steering Committee will be online on March 17, in the afternoon. The following SC will be in May (day TBD).
The next in-person meeting will be in Utrecht in September and possible suitable dates are September 18-19.
Elena Cellai informs the partners that the second financial installment (20%) will be delivered soon and the following one (20%) will be delivered in May-June.
The meeting ends at 2 pm.
