Project duration: 1.1.2022 – 31.12.2024

Objective:

The project aims to increase students’ entrepreneurship/business skills, broaden University-Business Cooperation in the RIS region, support EIT-labelled MSc-s and boost employment of the RM graduates leveraging regional brain-drain. 21 matchmaking events will be organized, 367 students will conduct an internship in 300 hosting organizations, 640 individuals will complete online training and 25-40 interns will be employed at the hosting organizations.

The solution (technology):

Public Higher Education Institutions (HEI) in the RIS region and especially in West Balkan often found difficult to fund internship programmes for their students, therefore within many raw material programmes internship is rated as an extracurricular activity or it is included in the curricula with minimal involvement of the HEI (for example Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia). Although European partner countries benefit from the Erasmus+ Internship programme, raw materials students without receiving structured support in their search for a hosting company/institution within Europe, have low chances to succeed in Internship applications compared to other sectors. Lack of structure within the implementation of internship decreases its positive impact, thus disabling a smooth transfer of entrepreneurial/business skills and leaving both student and hosting organisation unsure of the expectations, optimal work organisation, workload, structure and objectives of their collaboration. RIS Internship project will address this regional challenge and introduce structured internship mobilities for the benefit of the raw materials students and the organisations of the ESEE region. The project is based on the successful ADRIA Internship1 programme, run by the Regional Centre ADRIA for three years for the benefit of the West Balkan countries.


The territorial coverage of the project will increase from West Balkan countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Slovenia) towards the whole East European RIS region, including Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia, already in 2022. During the project, about 367 students will conduct an internship in 300 companies. At the current rate of employment of 10% for the interns participating in the programme, we estimate that about 40 students will remain employed in the industry after their graduation. Train-the-trainer activities focused on 270 industry supervisors will additionally increase the entrepreneurship/business skills of the interns and broaden University-Business Cooperation (UBC) activities. The project will encourage the employment of the RM graduates in the local industry and leverage brain drain in the ESEE region.
RIS internship will explore synergy with EIT RM-labelled master programmes. A number of months will be allocated for obligatory internship experience for the students of the EIT RM programmes EMerald2 and SINReM3, AMIR4 and a number of students from the RIS region are going to be recruited for a semester mobility toward Emerald, SINReM, or AMIR. That way RIS Internship programme will strengthen labeled master programmes and increase the number of RIS students

Partners:

  • University of Zagreb – Faculty of Mining, Geology and Petroleum Engineering (UNIZG-RGNF), Croatia (Lead Partner)
  • Zavod za gradbenistvo Slovenije, ZAG (Slovenian National Building and Civil Engineering Institute), Slovenia
  • University of Miskolc, Hungary
  • Université de Liège, Belgium
  • Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg (TUBAF), Germany
  • Technical University of Kosice, Slovakia
  • Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia
  • Politechnika Wroclawska (Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, WUST), Poland
  • National Technical University of Athens – NTUA, Greece

 

Find out more on the official project website.