Alfa Puentes project: Building Capacity of University Associations in fostering Latin American regional integration
The project will look to build wider regional convergence from the bottom up, utilising the sub-regional experience as a building block. It will simultaneously aim to generate stronger working relationships between European and LA associations. The project consists of 8 European and 14 Latin American institutions.
Regions of cooperation in Latin America are:
1. Mesoamerican Region: Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, Honduras;
2. Andean Region: Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru;
3. Mercosur Region: Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay.
This three-year Alfa Puentes project will enhance the capacity of Latin American (LA) university associations to:
1) advise and support their members on institutional higher education modernisation and internationalisation;
2) engage in dialogue and act collectively at national and regional policy levels;
3) engage internationally through structured dialogue and cooperation with sister organisations in the LA sub-regions and beyond, and with European partners.
European partners will support the initiatives, and share their respective experience under the European Bologna Process where appropriate. Transversal activities, such as two major Europe-LA university association conferences and bilateral networking activities for European and LA associations, will also be incorporated throughout the project.
Conference of Rectors of Academic Schools in Poland strategic representative in the Alfa Puentes project is dean of the Faculty of Philology of University of Silesia in Katowice, prof. Rafał Molencki. Operating representative is manager of the Conference office, Agata Kulesza.
Partner institutions from across Latin America and Europe gathered between 15-17th May 2011 in Bogota, Colombia at the kick-off meeting of the Alfa Puentes project. Meeting of the European partners of the project took place in Brussels on October 20th 2011.
Between 6-9th November 2011, the First Regional Integration Seminar of the Alfa Puentes project took place in Lima, Peru. Main fields of discussion were: quality assurance and qualifications frameworks in Europe and Latin America
Second Regional Integration Seminar of the Alfa PUENTES project has been organized between 4-6th March 2012 in Santiago de Chile for the Second Regional Integration Seminar of the Alfa Puentes project. Academic mobility and recognition of qualifications and course credits were the main issues addressed in this trans-national activity.