The programme is designed to encourage the partnerships between organisations in the Donor Countries and in the beneficiary countries.

This is why we offer you some advice and useful links on:

PARTNER SEARCH for EEA GRANTS – Education, Scholarships, Apprenticeships and Youth Entrepreneurship Programme

1. The potential partner institutions in the Donor States will be in huge demand for project collaboration. It is therefore important that your inquiry is clear, comprehensive, tempting and not too long.
2. You should have a reasonably clear picture of the project or the activity that you are seeking partners for. This is not to say that the whole project idea needs to be fully developed – the DS partner should be invited to be involved in the project development – but enough developed for a potential partner to be able to assess what the project(s) is about. General statements like “we are a school that wants to work with a similar Norwegian school” has very little chance of success, and such inquiries are very difficult to promote for the Donor Programme Partner, such as SIU.
3. Your inquiry for partners should be sent as early as possible, invitations that are received a week or two before the application deadline puts pressure on the DPP and any other intermediary promoter, and will in most cases not even be considered by potential partners, such as schools or HEIs.
4. The inquiry should contain at least the following elements:

• Your name and contact information (address, email, phone)
• Your institution and any reference information (f i web page)
• Some basic info about your institution and the intended project, such as:

1. Number of students, staff etc. (but not too much)
2. Previous experience in collaboration (EEA Grants, E+ etc. Examples only, not a long list)
3. Desired subject field(s) for collaboration (not too many, or it will be difficult to grasp for the recipient. If you want to work in several fields, make another inquiry)
4. Main plans /ideas for the project (not much detail, but enough to catch the interest of the potential partner.
5. Time frame, size in terms of money and work.
6. Basic conditions for the collaboration, including financial issues. Read the call and accompanying documents thoroughly.

•  Any other information that you think can be of interest

5. Finding a partner – Do your homework! Don’t “shout in the forest”, but rather try to target your audience.
   • An inquiry sent to tens or hundreds of recipients will have a general air about it which will rarely attract attention, and in addition will make it easier to discard, even without responding at all.
   • Experience tells us that those who have done projects before will be more likely to do so again. A lot of information is available on the web, and is easily accessible, this is especially the case for higher education institutions, but also other institutions and organisations may be found using web search tools. Some information for other parts of the education sector is given below.
6. Information sources on the web:
   • The EEA Grants website has information about all previous projects: eeagrants.org
     Your PO will possess information about previous collaboration for your country.
   • The European Commission has a project catalogue: Erasmus+ Project results:
     http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/projects/eplus-projects-compendium/
   • E-twinning: a contact portal for schools, and even kindergardens all over Europe: https://www.etwinning.net/en/pub/index.htm

Some useful Norwegian webpages (in EN):

• Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training 
• The official Norwegian national education and career portal
• The Norwegian Association for Adult Learning
• Fleksibel utdanning Norge – FuN organizes 40 Norwegian providers of flexible education; including independent distance education institutions, public universities and colleges, private institutions and training centers for business and industry.
• Study in Norway – In this website there is (among other things) a list of all Norwegian HEIs. All Norwegian HEIs have extensive information about their study programs, employees etc. in English as well as in Norwegian.

7. When you have found one or more potential candidates, go one step further and try to address the right people directly. In a HEI you will be more than one step closer to success if you can contact the dean of the faculty closest to your idea, the director of a department, the responsible person for a subject field etc.
8. Partner search portal? Our experience has shown that this is not a good way to find partners, and we therefore do not use this in this period.
9. Good luck!

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Also, on this page you can find general information on identifying potential project partners and on development of such partnerships.

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Useful links for finding partners in Switzerland (please see in the Applicants’ Guide the details regarding the education system in Liechtenstein and its connections with the education system in Switzerland):

The Swiss educational system (EN)

VET system in Switzerland (EN)

Initial vocational training (FR)

A list of VET schools in Switzerland  (Attention! You will have to check if the school you find relevant for your project has the necessary agreements concluded with the school in Liechtenstein.)

The Swiss portal of VET (FR)

Apprenticeship in a school or company in Switzerland (FR)