The partner meetings for two of the projects; ‘Rural Women’s Club’ and ‘Go4Vet’ were held in Larnaca during October, whilst a new project ‘MAAS' (Match, Attain and Sustain: New Methods for Europe’s Job Brokers Supporting Tourism Businesses, Ukrainian Refugees and Job Seekers) commenced with its kick-off meeting at the start of October.
The ‘Rural Women’s Club’ is a project aimed at supporting women in rural communities and their pivotal role in preserving and practicing local traditions, with an emphasis on gastronomy. LTB is participating for Cyprus alongside the Women’s Association of Rural Larnaka (WARL); a collective of women from Larnaca region’s village and mountain communities who are active in keeping handmade traditions (gastronomy and handicrafts) alive, and also organise the annual ‘Festival of Tradition and Culture’ each October.
Project partners from Poland and Greece visited Larnaca for the meet, and their local women’s groups participated in the ‘Festival of Tradition and Culture’ presenting their own unique products based on the traditions of their respective countries and regions. The project allows the women’s groups to share their customs and best practices with one another and compare the culture of each partner country, with the project materials including a guide on how rural women’s clubs benefit and enrich the communities they operate in. During their visit to Larnaca region, the project partners toured rural villages and participated in cooking workshops.
The second meeting hosted in Larnaca was ‘Go4Vet’. The project involves five partners from Cyprus, Greece, Poland and Finland, working together to strengthen the potential of VET providers to implement vocational international traineeships under Erasmus + (2021-2027).
The partnership will achieve this by developing and implementing new learning agreement programmes for four professions – with LTB responsible for the tourism industry - as well as the development of recommendations and good practices in the field of inclusion of students with a disability into international vocational mobility projects.
Whilst in Larnaca, the partners met with several tourism industry and tourism education figures to discuss how potential internships can work and how to best prepare the environment for disabled interns and international interns, as well as meeting with staff at St Barnabas School for the Blind and Larnaca Municipality to discuss the employment of persons with disabilities in Cyprus in general. The site visits were the second set since the project commenced, with the first taking place in Poland in June.
