EU Funded Programmes

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SETU Carlow has been the beneficiary of a number of EU funded projects and plays a major part in pursuing and supporting EU and Cross Border Development Initiatives.  It has partnered with organisations and facilities globally, opening up development opportunities and funding new research.

Enter to Transform

Enter to Transform - Transformational Entrepreneurship Hubs for Recognised Refugee Re-starters is a €2.14 Interreg part-funded North-West Europe project which helps to increase the entreprenurship capacity of recognised refugees(RR). The initiative offers a social innovation addressing Recognised Regugee re-starters to become ready for business creation.Recognised Refugee restarters with business experiences in their own country have a huge potential for business creation and/or expansion but need specific mentoring to adopt to a new country. The project addresses the need of Recognised Refugee restarters for social inclusion through self-employment and aims at the impact on the regional rconomy and market. The project develops a supportive environment of hubs, which function through mentoring as a "door opener" for Recognised Refugee re-starters to enter existing entreprenurial infastructures.

More information here»

ReNu2Farm

ReNu2Farm is part funded by Interreg North-West Europe and comprises 10 partners from higher education organisations, research institutes and industry and seeks to replace conventional mineral fertilisers with recycling-derived equivalents. The project will work to address the global threat posed to industrial agriculture by the vast depletion of the essential macronutrients nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium (N, P, K), without which plants cannot survive. The future of agriculture and food supplies necessitates nutrient recycling or composting on a global scale. The ReNu2Farm project will map regions in North-West Europe with both nutrient shortage and surplus with the aim of exchanging recycled nutrients across the regions and foster producer-consumer collaborations.  Farmers’ needs will be surveyed during the project and the results used to tailor and develop recycling-derived fertilisers between nutrient surplus and demand regions. The undertaking will help in establishing transnational markets, informing national and EU policy and market barrier reduction. The overall expected outcome by the end of the project will be the replacement of conventional mineral NPK fertilisers by recycling-derived fertilisers.

More information here»

CATALYST

CATALYST is a pilot scheme to drive innovation within Welsh and Irish businesses in the life science and food and drink sectors. Backed with €1.3m of EU funding, the Catalyst project will bring together partners on both sides of the Irish Sea to develop new products and processes within their fields. The scheme will work with 60 businesses to develop new specialist products, access new markets, and ensure packaging of products are sustainably sourced and minimised.

The aim is to encourage business growth and create new employment opportunities. Supported through the EU’s Ireland Wales Cooperation Programme, the project partners are SETU Carlow, Tipperary County Council and Carlow County Council in Ireland and University of Wales Trinity Saint David and WRAP Cymru in Wales. The scheme will address a range of challenges that can prevent businesses from developing their products and processes in areas such as designing medical devices and food for health and wellbeing.

The participating enterprises will have access to workshops where businesses from both sectors will jointly explore sustainable development opportunities. Participating businesses will then embark on an innovation residency programme to work alongside specialist academic staff and expert partners to create new, sustainable and innovative products and processes.

Arts and Humanities Entrepreneurship Hub

The Arts and Humanities Enterprise Hub (AHEH) is an Erasmus+ Knowledge Alliance funded project. 

AHEH is a major new European 3-year project that brings together an alliance of 14 partners from 7 European countries. Partners from academia and industry will work together to jointly research, design, test and disseminate a programme of entrepreneurial training for Arts and Humanities staff and students.

European Arts and Humanities students face challenges with accessing graduate level employment and entrepreneurship opportunities. These courses typically do not have a direct route to the job market, reflected in higher unemployment and lower salaries. There can be a lack of knowledge from academics about aligning subject expertise with wider industry need as well as a lack of recognition by businesses of the wider benefits and skill sets of Arts and Humanities graduates.

Dedicated support in HEIs for entrepreneurial activity has been mainly focused on business, economics and ICT faculties. A&H Students come from a very different starting point, with education and skills that do not meet industry need in an obvious way. Therefore, a fresh approach is needed to develop a tailored A&H entrepreneurship model that improves the long-term entrepreneurial prospects for A&H students.

The AHEH alliance will:

  • Bring together 14 partners from across 7 EU member states to improve the entrepreneurial capacity of A&H students.
  • Jointly research, design, test and disseminate an innovative programme of entrepreneurial training for A&H staff/ students aligned with the EntreComp Competence Framework. This builds upon partners’ prior experience of EU-funded enterprise projects.
  • Have HEIs, businesses and stakeholders working together to champion the value of A&H students to a wider audience and ensure that industry need is reflected in the training programmes.
  • Create 7 new A&H Entrepreneurship Hubs situated in partner faculties. These will be the specialist conduits for permanently improving the entrepreneurial skill-sets of A&H staff and students as well as a template for wider exploitation.
  • Create a website that will complement the 7 Hubs as an ongoing resource-base for disseminating/exploiting outputs.

These include:

  • 3 training programmes: HEI, A&H Students, Businesses
  • 3 manuals: Trainers, Users, AHEH Management
  • 2 contextual reports: Academic & Business

The partnership will offer further opportunities to develop student exchange programmes and to explore shared research interests and opportunities for international collaboration.
The project AHEH is Co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union. Further information on the Arts & Humanities Entrepreneurship Hub.

BUCANIER

BUCANIER (Building Clusters and Networks in Innovation, Enterprise and Research) project is a new €2.9 million EU-funded scheme to support small businesses in Ireland and Wales. 

BUCANIER is part-funded through the European Regional Development Fund as part of the Ireland-Wales cooperation programme, which is helping to strengthen economic links and collaboration between the two countries.

SETU Carlow is joining forces with Bord Iascaigh Mhara (BIM), Wexford County Council, Swansea University and Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire County Councils in Wales to help boost trade and provide specialist support to help small businesses design and develop new products and services.

The project will work in key growth sectors of the Welsh and Irish economies, including food and drink, life sciences and renewable energy and approximately 120 Welsh and Irish businesses are expected to benefit from the BUCANIER project over the next three years. 

SETU Carlow and its partners will also offer innovation master-classes, business mentoring and create new networks between Wales and Ireland, aimed at helping businesses in the same sectors share knowledge, increase cross-border trade and create new jobs.

Further information on the Bucanier Project.

European Union Ambient Assisted Living Programme (AAL)

The core of the AAL Joint Programme is to provide innovative and financially sustainable Information and Communication Technology (ICT) based solutions for elderly persons, which means innovative products, systems or services, addressing identified wishes and the needs of the end-users.  The programme aims to address social isolation and reduce loneliness by bridging distances, facilitating interaction and communication, thus enabling people to live in their preferred environment as long as possible.

It addresses social interaction with a focus on the cognitive, psycho-social and cultural aspects and aims to create better conditions for older adults and strengthen industrial opportunities in Europe through the use of ICT.  For further information click here>>

BRTE

SETU Carlow has partnered with the UCD Centre for Humanitarian Action, Concern Worldwide, Future Analytics and Wolaita Sodo University (WSU) in Ethiopia as part of a €2.1 million European-funded Horizon 2020 project which aims to Build Resistance Through Education (BRTE). The project has been funded through the Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (RISE) programme.

The Building Resilience Through Education (BRTE) Consortium brings together partners from academia, the private sector and the NGO sector to find innovative ways to strengthen the resilience of communities affected by recurring disasters. This project has its origins in an ex-post impact evaluation of Concern Worldwide’s twenty-five year engagement in Wolaita, Ethiopia. Conducted by University College Dublin’s Centre for Humanitarian Action in collaboration with Wolaita Sodo University, the evaluation found that, despite significant improvements in communities’ capacities to both absorb the effects of recurring disasters and to adapt their livelihoods based on experience of recent disasters, they remain extremely vulnerable to their natural and environmental context.

As a result there is an urgent need for a novel approach that moves beyond supporting the mere absorption of or adaptation to recurring shocks and that transforms the capacity of exposed communities. The BRTE partnership has identified the importance of education in bringing about this transformative change. It aim is to build the capacity of Wolaita’s educational institution in pursuit of the following objectives:

  • To build the requisite critical infrastructure to enable resilience education and research
  • To establish an educational platform that will build human capital and transform livelihoods
  • To develop research and innovation capacity that will radically promote social and economic wellbeing

The BRTE programme will serve as a model of how education can drive transformative resilience in areas subject to recurring and protracted crises. For further information here