The Million of Erasmus Grants (MEGA) project was officially launched on January 17th-18th 2022, when the consortium met online for a two-day “kick off” meeting. It was an opportunity for all partners to set up the administrative procedures, to discuss communication tools and channels, as well to progress on the creation of the project website, the design of the logo and the overall organisation of the upcoming tasks, milestones and results.
In addition, the objectives of the first project result (PR1) Methodological guidelines for student grant distribution were presented by representatives of its leading organisations: Mendel University, Czech Republic, and Selçuk University, Türkiye. The purpose of the PR1 is to achieve a general picture of the financial management of the Erasmus+ grants across Europe. Through a survey targeting students, international relations officers of Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) and Erasmus+ National Agencies (NAs) , it is expected to reach a better understanding of key issues linked to students grant management.
The meeting concluded with a workshop. In small groups, the participants brainstormed on the structure and content of the survey. In sum, three sets of questions were defined for each target group:
- Students: Directed at both students who have already participated in Erasmus+ mobility and those willing to go abroad, an assessment of the level of satisfaction with the current situation, including the main difficulties that they encounter, and an opportunity to describe their ideal process;
- HEIs: A collection of the latest data on payment delays in order to estimate their level of satisfaction, identify the bottlenecks to be eliminated and offer a space to put forward proposals for improvement; and
- National Agencies: A description of the ongoing practices at national level so as to evaluate their level of satisfaction and discuss other propositions to manage the grant calculation and payment method.
Cover photo by LipikStockMedia on Freepik