One of the main priorities for EDF in coming years is to strengthen our movement by building the capacity among our members in the area of knowledge, skills, tools and funding opportunities. We believe that one of the first steps should be strengthening financial capacity. That’s why EDF wants to support our members in applying for European funding and that’s why on the 23rd of November we organized a webinar to introduce to our members the European funding on research. You can watch the recording of the webinar on EDF’s YouTube channel.
Druring the webinar the new EDF Funding and Grants Officer Magdalena Verseckas gave an overview of available European funding and ways that EDF members can use the support of EDF secretariat in this domain. Magdalena as Funding and Grants Officer is responsible for informing members about potential funding opportunities. She will also support members in development of proposals, and will invite members to EDF’s projects. She will coordinate capacity building activities in the area of fundraising, project development and project implementation.
During the webinar she made an introduction to the new EU budget, known as the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) 2021 – 2027, and briefly presented funding programmes relevant for the disability movement: European Social Fund Plus, Erasmus+, European Solidarity Corps, Digital Europe and Creative Europe. You can find more details in Magdalena’s presentation.
As we know, the necessity is the mother of invention and to properly identify what is needed the EU created the Horizon 2020 funding programme dedicated to research. From last year the program was transformed into Horizon Europe programme. This funding stream focused on research was presented by Pilar Orero from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Pilar described what activities can be covered by Horizon programme and explained the process of developing a project application step by step. She also gave examples of Horizon funded projects relevant for persons with disabilities. She emphasized that participation of representative organizations of persons with disabilities in European projects is extremely important as this is one of the ways to make our voice heard and to implement our motto “nothing about us without us”. More details you can find in Pilar’s presentation.
Watch the webinar following this link.