The First Annual Conference of the FEAD Community will take place online on 22 and 23 October 2020.

© Shutterstock / STILLFX

The conference is the first mutual learning event of a cycle of capacity-building seminars aimed at improving the Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived (FEAD) delivery at national, regional and local level. The conference will provide an opportunity to take stock of FEAD’s achievements to date and discuss future challenges to be addressed. It will give participants the opportunity to share experiences from the ground and to shape the upcoming capacity-building seminars aiming at exploring promising practices and innovative solutions to common issues.

The conference will focus on:

• Taking stock of achievements of the FEAD Community so far
• Collecting learnings from the health and social crisis related to the Coronavirus pandemic and the responses to it
• Identifying challenges that still need to be tackled by involved stakeholders
• Identifying steps to overcome priority challenges during the transition period, also in response to the crisis in relation to the coronavirus pandemic, and in view of the upcoming programming period (ESF+)

Participants

The First Annual Conference will gather up to 150 participants, who had expressed interest in the postponed event that was to take place on 10 March 2020. This will include representatives of local, regional and national stakeholders involved in the implementation of FEAD, including: Managing Authorities, Intermediate Bodies, beneficiaries providing support and their partners (e.g. municipalities), independent experts, civil society organisations and representatives from the European Commission. 

Up to 90 participants can take part in online working group discussions held in the afternoon of 22 October 2020.

Conference structure

Due to concerns around the spread of the coronavirus the First Annual Conference of the FEAD Community will take place online over two days (22 to 23 October 2020), through a series of shorter sessions. 

The Conference will involve interactive sessions using Sli.do to allow all participants to ask questions and make comments. During the working group discussions (places limited), the visual collaboration tool MURAL will be used. Participants will receive links to pre-recorded presentations to watch in their own time and to prepare for the conference.