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EIT Food South Offers Online Mentoring Package Focussing on Finding Opportunities Within Horizon Europe

The mentoring packages are focused on finding opportunities within Horizon Europe. The service is co-funded by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). Selected companies will contribute with 350 Euros (+ applicable VAT).

22 Nov 2021

EIT Food South offers 8 mentoring packages for SMEs working with water efficiency and sustainability.

The mentoring packages are focused on finding opportunities within Horizon Europe. The service is co-funded by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). Selected companies will contribute with 350 Euros (+ applicable VAT).

Horizon Europe (HE) is the new framework programme of the European Commission (EC) to fund research and innovation. Horizon Europe has a budget of EUR 95.5 billion for the period from 2021-2027. This budget is considerably higher than the budget of the previous programme, Horizon 2020. HE offers plenty of opportunities for innovative companies. Moreover, SMEs are one of the most relevant target groups for the EC. They are essential to Europe’s strategy to promote Research and Innovation. In Horizon 2020, it is expected that 20% of the total combined budget for all Societal Challenges and the specific objective Leadership in Enabling and Industrial Technologies (LEITs) will go to SMEs. This means that over EUR 8 billion in EU support for Research and Innovation activities will go directly to SMEs, most of them part of consortiums participating in EU collaborative Research and Innovation projects.

We have selected three high-profile mentors (see attachment) with an extensive experience in the proposal preparation and coordination of R&D&I projects funded by the EC to support your company in the process of fundraising. The selected experts will provide tailored-made advice on how to access European R&D&I funding opportunities within Horizon Europe. The mentoring programme will be very practical and oriented to define the best strategy for your specific innovative solution. Thus, you will be able to identify the scope, objectives, impacts and exploitation routes of your innovation and set the basis to further develop a complete and successful proposa

Key activities during the mentoring:

Session 1 

26 November 2021 at 10:00 CET 

General overview of Horizon Europe programme.

Objective: understanding the different pillars of HE, where to find funding opportunities for SMEs, types of projects, funding scheme, etc.

Assignment: Each mentee will be requested to draft a summary of their innovation idea in order to identify the specific calls for proposals within the HE work programmes that might be suitable for funding.

Session 2 (Individual): 1.5 h

This session will be very practical and participatory. The mentor will guide each mentee to check the different work programmes where the funding opportunities are published and extract what kind of information is needed to select the right strategy. During the session mentor and mentee will search together specific opportunities (i.e. calls for applicants) adapted to the characteristics of the mentee and analyse for each opportunity the budget available, the type of action required, the maturity of the solution, etc.

Assignment: Mentors will prepare a summary table with the most promising calls for proposals for each mentee. Mentees will be requested to select one specific funding opportunity to work during session 3.

Session 3 (Individual): 1.5 h

In this session, mentor and mentee will go through the template for applicants related to the opportunity selected and define together the scope and type of information needed in each section showing how the application should look like with practical examples. Special attention Page 5 of 6 will be paid to the definition of “Key Impact Pathways” (KIP), a new approach in Horizon Europe to define impacts indicators. Finally, the mentor will share practical tips for the proposal preparation.

Deadline to submit your expression of interest: 25.11.2021, 13:00 CET

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