The Project Meeting of the cross-border cooperation project “TELEICCE – Promotion of Teleworking and Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Training for Increased Cluster Competitiveness and Employment” co-funded by the Interreg V-A Greece-Italy Programme 2014-2020 with a budget of around € 877.707,50 will be held on 19th and 20th March in Brindisi (Puglia).
The Hellenic Open University is the lead beneficiary of this project in cooperation with two Italian partners CNA Brindisi and IFOA Bari, and two Greek partners, the Chamber Of Achaia and the Ionian University.
TeleICCE financed under Priority Axis 1 (Innovation and Competitiveness) of the Interreg V-A Greece-Italy Programme 2014-2020 is to propose the adoption of an innovative business-to-freelancer (b2f) model facilitated by Teleworking platforms and a skills building framework through Massive Open Online Course platforms that will enhance the competitiveness of SMEs and the employment of professionals.
B2f model is already serviced by many Teleworking platforms (Upwork, Freelancer, Guru etc), but up to now there is no significant uptake by SMEs and freelancers in the CBC area. Additionally, there are numerous Massive Open Online Course present (Coursera, FutureLearn, P2PU, Higher Education Institutes Platforms etc) on the web that could modernize skills of professionals in order to be more creative & productive and therefore more fit for freelancing tasks. Therefore, structured provision and wide usage of free Teleworking and Massive Open Online Course platforms by both Small and Medium Enterprises and freelancers, will deliver benefits for both groups of end-users in multiple ways.
TeleICCE is not aiming at developing new teleworking & Massive Open Online Course platforms but rather to create awareness regarding them, present them in a coherent way (e.g. per market sector) and provide support & training for Small and Medium Enterprises and freelance professionals on how to exploit them, with overall aim to increase their competitiveness and employment respectively. TeleICCE is promoting the added-value of such platforms to the end-users through awareness raising, training and implementation of sectoral pilot projects that will act as proof of concept
Thanks to this project, 90 micro, small and medium-sized enterprises and 180 freelancers will be identified who can participate in dedicated training seminars and benefit from a series of pilot applications that will cover different areas of intervention (accounting & finance / consulting / ITC / social entrepreneurship) . Finally, the project provides for the establishment of Multipurpose Centers in each region involved in the project: Puglia Region (IT), Corfu (GR) and Patras (GR).