On July 4, 2022 the project partners officially launched the GreenFORCE project with an online event bringing together all project partners and aiming to get the project off the ground and officially get started. GreenFORCE ambitions at fostering excellence in the “Western Balkans’ green transition” scientific research and innovation of Co-PLAN (Albania), CEA (North Macedonia), and UB-GEF (Serbia), as a means to enhancing their research profile, strengthening research and management capacities of their staff, and contributing to convergence between Western Balkans (WB) and EU research capacities, as well as to wider policy initiatives for the WB region.

The event served to endorse the consortium agreement, define ethical and IPR responsibilities and discuss and agree on the project approach, activities and tasks for each of the work packages, preparation of the project deliverables and coordination between the project partners.

The kick off meeting, was the first one of a series of in person, hybrid and online meetings that are organised monthly by the project coordinator – Co-PLAN, aiming to guarantee the smooth and effective implementation of the project. Preparation of a number of project deliverables, important for the management, implementation and monitoring of the project started following the kick off. 

In these months of the project implementation, the Project Management Board and Research Advisory Boards have been established and are supporting the cooperation among partners, coordination between Work Packages and validating the research methodologies and practices undertaken by the project. The project partners worked for the preparation of the Ethics Workplan and a Data Management Plan, accompanied with an Evaluation Scheme with the steps for carrying out the monitoring and evaluation regularly. 

Important focus was given to the dissemination, sharing and communication activities. In this regard the project partners worked and prepared the dissemination and communication strategy, aiming at identifying and structuring the activities leading to the communication and promotion of the project’s tasks and results. The strategy outlines also the improvement of research communication for the WB partners. It defines key values of communication and sharing, target audiences, key messages, communication channels and partners’ responsibilities, measurable criteria, KPIs of the outreach, and tools.