December 2020 has witnessed two important news for the project, saluting the begin of the field activities: the International Project Coordinator Dr Alessandro Dessì held a mission in Tunisia, to settle the local Project Management Unit and collaborators. Together with the National Coordinator Skander Ben Salem he had also the chance to meet the dr Alessia Tribuiani and dr. Eleonora Fiorello, at the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation AICS, as well as the counterpart and other institutions involved in the project activities, including dr. Zahiri at the Ministry of Agriculture, the President of IRESA dr H. Hamza and its director dr H. Ben Salem, several INSTM researchers, the Head of APIA dr Chaffai and Yacoub , in addition to the focal point of the Mediterranean Innovation Partnership (MIP) dr Raouda Khaldi and the experts engaged in other CIHEAM projects in Tunisia.
Despite the well-known difficulties of this complicated 2020, the conditions in Tunisia seem very well set to allow the effective execution of the action, and to build synergies with other programmes, both on-going and about to start. In particular, PRASOC and ADAPT, two programmes managed by AICS, are funding an ambitious programme of credit and investments in agriculture, fishery and the development of social and solidary economy (SSE), very well matching the fields touched by WaterMedYin.
In the same days, in Lebanon, Palestine and Tunisia, four young researchers (and former- CIHEAM-students) started to contact the local Innovation Support Organizations. These are invited to participate in our survey, investigating their structure, expertise, equipment, outreach and training capacity, as well as the potential to contribute to the expansion of the innovation ecosystem in their country and beyond. The survey has been performed until the end of December 2020. If you your work has to do with boosting innovation and supporting start-up companies and local communities in green development initiatives, and if you think that the description above matches at least some of your interests and business, please contact the national Project Management Unit, and join the target group.
