Aurora Project

Background

AURORA stands for Alliance of Universities to Reinforce teacher training curricula to Outcast    Radicalism and promote equality in Asian societies. It is an Erasmus + CBHE frame joint project of the European Union. It involves two Asian Countries (Nepal & India) with eight institutions and four European Countries (Czech Republic, Ireland, Romania & Spain) with four institutions. The tenure of the project is for three years. But the Covid-19, outbreak may extend it to further few years.

Objectives

The wider objective of this project is to create a program for Curricular Reform in India and Nepal that will promote INCLUSIVE EDUCATION through teacher training programs in Bachelor and Master levels by developing new courses in educational programs, faculty and teacher workshops, student leadership training and student activities to foster gender equality, democratic values and combat radicalism to be applied from early stages in the school. 

The specific objectives are:

-to enhance the quality of academic education for teacher training through the development and modernization of courses that tackle gender equality, respect for human rights and democracy and combat radicalism. 

• -to disseminate and sustain new courses extending them to other dept., HEIs and primary/secondary Schools.
• -to establish AURORA Centres for inclusive education at HEIs and at Schools to enhance social inclusive and democratic values.
• -to enhance cooperation between HEI with other educational centres.

Work Packages/Plans & Activities

In order to achieve the goals of the project, there are the following Work Packages/Plans and the Activities being carried out. Though the project norm is to carry out the activities in different countries, the outbreak of the Covid-19 and its continuation of the second wave have confined the project within the online framework.

1. WP1: Output: Setup of working teams in 3 areas: democracy, gender equity and combatting radicalism.
2. WP2 Output: 3 Courses for inclusive education delivered at each teacher training institution including online format. Train-the trainer sessions with innovative pedagogic tools.
3. Output: online delivery of courses selected for teacher training
4. WP4: Output: Tools and assessment of created programs.
5. WP5: Output: Dissemination plan, Conferences, Publications, leaflets, video with storylines Website. Outcome: dissemination of courses and integration of created courses in other institutions. Labelling of AURORA programs.
6. WP6: Output: Project and financial management tools.

The European University partners share the best practices that they have adopted to succeed and the Nepalese and the Indian partners will be trained to implement those trends. From Nepal, Tribhuvan University is taking a lead role while Pokhara University and National Law College will be assisting to TU. Similarly, from India Banasthali Vidyapith is in the lead role while other universities and institutions will assist it. The Nepalese partners together with the Indian partners under the guidance of further European partners will develop the course modules that will be delivered for inclusive education after having set up Teacher Training Institution in each partner university of Nepal and India under the project norms in order to disseminate the main three core areas-democracy, gender equity and combatting radicalism.

For this particular training centre, we need the logistics and space. Each partner has to manage the space by itself while for the logistics the purchase of equipment is suggested ( see the pdf attached) by the European Union and the host University to achieve the outputs of Work Plan 2 & 3.

Financial Lay out

The total budget for the project is 89,500 Euros which will be distributed to preparation, development, quality plan, dissemination and exploitation and management. The budget will be further allocated to staff costs, travel costs, costs of stay during mobility, equipment costs, subcontracting costs and exceptional costs. (please see the pdf for detailed financial breakdown of budget). The first instalment has been directly transferred by the host to AURORA Porject, Pokhara University with a sum of NPR 55,07,499.20 (fifty five lakhs  seven thousands four hundred and ninety nine rupees twenty paisa)  in September, 2020.

Distribution of the Grant by Organisation in EUR for Pokhara University

The Budget Breakdown by Partner/Work Package

                                                 Source: Partnership Agreement Annex-1

Impression

Due to the hard times of the Covid-19 and its second wave in India and Nepal, the budget allocated for travel is restricted to use; apparently there is no mobility and thus no meetings abroad. The work packages are being carried out and the course modules are being developed together with Asian and European partners. The partners join in virtual meetings for discussion. They have also completed the ToT that aims to train the teachers who would support in piloting the courses. Now Pokhara University has used the 70% of the budget in the staff cost and equipment purchase.

As we have discussed with the host, they have allowed us to purchase the equipment worth 25000 Euros in two different biddings considering the time factor that we should purchase in the shortest time possible. As suggested this purchase was completed in the month of June and October in 2021.

The fund for the purchase of the equipment has been used from the Institutional Account of Bank of Kathmandu AURORA Project Pokhara University.

Aurora Lab