More Projects and Exposures

Going through November was another blast.

The to-do list was longer and more challenging. With the existing projects running and the new ones coming up, different sorts of tasks, ranging from facilitation to generating strategies, need to be completed. This month, I am exposed to new projects (i.e., LAURDS), new areas of existing projects (i.e., SEASIN) as well as the new discoveries from other sides of The Europe Office and GCU as a whole.

LAURDS PROJECT: Research Culture

The rationale of this project is that it aims to contribute to the knowledge economy of Latin American Universities through economies of expertise by the development of research capability and capacity. Besides developing research culture and strategies, the objective of LAURDS is also developing doctoral provisions.

On top of website review and recommendations, as a new project, LAURDS needs to be introduced to the public apart from partners around Latin America. This is accomplished by social media marketing strategy. Spending a few days in the week this month, I have prepared a document for LAURDS project social media marketing, i.e., Facebook.

eMarketer (2016) claims that there are more than 90% of Facebook users among all social media users in Latin America.

The social media marketing strategy and implementation should serve the purpose of raising awareness among the public about the project, its values, and its offers. Moreover, social media outreach should inform and engage university partners on what is happening around the project as well as to keep track of project updates and create open calls for participants in case of particular events. By executing social media plans such as video animation and vlogging, it creates tactics that boost views and engagement from the audience in general.

SEASIN And Other New Exposures

Over the past month, SISUs in Southeast Asia were mostly having soft launches. In Cambodia, National University of Management and Royal University of Phnom Penh have their own support units in the aim of promoting social innovation. Besides the mentioned digitally creative side of NUM SISU, I now acquire another role of coordinating SEASIN Cambodian partners. To make this happen, a Facebook group was created and touched up to bring together the representatives from each partner in Cambodia, both universities and enterprises, in order to share ideas and project accomplishments. It is also for facilitating purpose if there are any concerns, questions, or comments. To promote social innovation concept in the long run, there needs to be cooperation from different parties in the same country and that is what the group is about. 

Regarding other exposures, studying Glasgow Caledonian University is one of them. Cambodian students’ perspective towards the school is an observable case. It is true that Glasgow Caledonian University is actually interesting to research on. For starter…

GCU is already one of the top 10 modern universities in the UK according to REF (2014), also rated as the most dynamic and innovative school.

.And there are much more about GCU than you expected. This can appear attractive for the public, especially international students.

 

~ Rosanich Sou

 

NEXT STOP: Hanoi, Santiago, Valparaiso & Bogota…

Hi Friends!

We have been absent from here for a few weeks but we have lots of new travel stories to update you with, including pictures!

Firstly – we started off our travels in Vietnam for the ENHANCE Project, in beautiful Hanoi to discuss applying Social Innovation to research and European Funding with our Vietnamese partners, as well as a visit to see the stunning Ha Long Bay.  For details about ENHANCE, see the end of this post.

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And the beautiful Ha Long Bay

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Next we were on our way to Chile to stop in Santiago, and then Valparaiso for our LASIN Project meetings.  We landed over the beautiful mountains in Santiago, and had our first lot of meetings at Universidad de Desarrollo, and then a workshop with partners Social Innovation Exchange (SIX), to prepare partners for the development of their individual Social Innovation Support Units.  We then had a visit to two innovative projects in Santiago – first to Ideas Factory Santiago, and second to Laboratorio de Gobernio.  

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Ideas Factory Santiago and Laboratorio de Gobernio

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We then spent a day in beautiful Valparaiso at Federico Santa María Technical University where we wrapped up our project meetings and visited the Ideas Factory in Valparaiso. 

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Finally, some of the group went Bogota, Colombia for the for SIX Summer School.  The event showcased other organisations and their activities in Social Innovation, as well as talks about different aspects, opportunities and challenges in social innovation.  For more information on this event and SIX’s activities see this link:

http://www.socialinnovationexchange.org/categories/read/six-summer-school-2016-in-colombia-social-innovation-in-divided-societies

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For more information on ENHANCE Project, see here: www.project-enhance.eu

For more on LASIN Project, see here: lasin-eu.org

For more on SIX, see here:  www.socialinnovationexchange.org

For more on Ideas Factory Chile, see here: www.ideafactory.cl

For more on Laboratorio de Gobernio, see here: lab.gob.cl

For more on Universidad de Desarollo, see here: www.udd.cl

For more on Federico Santa María Technical University, see here: www.usm.cl

 

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