A cooperation between a university department in Flanders and the South
A TEAM is a four-year departmental level cooperation project focusing on specific development themes. This kind of project aims at strengthening the research and/or educational capacity in a specific thematic domain and usually focuses on one department in one (sometimes more than one) partner institution(s) in the South. Teams in both the North as well as in the South collaborate in a unique partnership addressing region-related challenges and offer local solutions in the concerned region/country, which are provided by assuring the right conditions for the uptake of new knowledge, applications or services.
A TEAM project very often builds upon earlier exploration or contacts through our organisation (South Initiatives (SI), a scholar who returns to his or her home institution .....) or other cooperations and deepens the academic/scientific collaboration.
TEAM projects potentially aim at:
in order to contribute to the fight against poverty in the concerned region/country and in the end, to generate development change (impact) (mostly after the intervention).
TEAM projects emerge from a local development problem/need, which is addressed by one or more academics from a developing country that collaborate with one or more Flemish academics by taking part in a common initiative. These projects align with the priorities of the local partner institute(s) at the policy level where the project was constituted (department or faculty).
Every year, we launch a call for TEAM projects proposals, which are assessed by an independent commission of experts based on six criteria: scientific quality, relevance, impact, efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability.