On the 5th of July 2021, all the partners of APPRAIS project held an international meeting which was called “1st Online Partners Meeting”. The aim of the meeting was to give each other updates regarding implementing the Project.

At the beginning, Dr. Marcello Scalisi, director of UNIMED and Ms. Silvia Marchionne, project manager and APPRAIS Project coordinator extended greetings to all the partners for their commitments and tireless efforts in implementing the project and they also gave introductions regarding the purpose of the meeting. Besides, Dr. Muhammed Hussein from Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research gave a short speech in which he highly appreciated the APPRAIS staff and all the European and Kurdish partners for their works and achievements regarding the project implementation in the five months history of the project.

Later, a presentation was offered on the progress of the WP1 (Update Needs Assessment) and next steps on the state of the art on the desk research, the governance glossary and self-assessment exercise by University of Duhok and UNIMED with the collaboration of EU partners.

Later on, another presentation was given by Dr. Nabil from University of Salahaddine and Dr. Barzan Hadi Hamakarim, APPRAIS coordinator at UoH. In the presentation, the progress of WP6 (Project Quality and Evaluation) and the next steps regarding the composition of the Quality Committee, the Quality plan and the selection of the external evaluator were clarified.
After that, a presentation on the progress of WP6 (Dissemination and Exploitation) and the next steps regarding the selection of the logo of the project , the dissemination plan and the website information was presented by Duhok Polytechnic University and UNIMED.

The last presentation was on the progress of WP8 (Management) and the next steps by Miss Silvia from UNIMED.
At the end, the meeting was concluded by Dr. Muhammed Hussein from MHESR.

APPRAIS which stands for Governance, quality, accountability: a piloting Reform Process in Kurdistan Region of Iraq is a co-financing project of Erasmus+ UNIMID- KA102, Capacity Building in the Field of Higher Education Call 2020. The aim of APPRAIS is to support modernization of the Governance system of HEIs in Kurdistan Region of Iraq, improve Quality Assurance to be fitted with the new system of Bologna process and to recognize the credits mobility. Besides, the project will last for three years (15/01/2021- 14/01/2024) which consisted of four European partners including Pisa University/ Italy, Oslo University/ Norway, Murcia University/ Spain and Evora University/ Portugal and Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research of KRG and eight public universities including Salahaddin, Sulaimani, Duhok, Halabja, Duhok Polytechnic, Garmian, Zakho and Charmo universities.