The project Start up for Development (START UP) is focused on the concept of smart cities/villages and the understanding of this concept by the municipalities who are the ones implementing smart solutions in their environment. It is based on a premise that the understanding of the concept of smart cities/villages by municipalities is on a low level due to the fact that the problem is too wide, and solutions even wider. There is also a lack of experts offering comprehensive solutions for municipalities, indeed, small municipalities cannot afford to have such experts in their employment. Therefore, the main goal of START UP is to prepare a course for trainers who will be able to give municipalities a clear and comprehensive explanation of what smart cities/villages would mean in their specific environment. To achieve this goal, START UP began with the survey of needs (IO1) addressed to municipalities and trainers. According to findings of this research in which 505 people from five countries participated, the participants answered that they are not familiar with the smart city concept, and that they would like to have training on this concept. The next step was the curriculum development for the Training of trainers on smart cities/villages course and the course materials development (IO3) divided in 6 Modules: Module 1 – Introduction, Module 2 – Smart governance, Module 3 – Smart environment, Module 4 – Smart transport, Module 5 – Smart life, and Module 6 – Smart economy. This material is freely available in English, Spanish, Turkish, Polish, Bulgarian and Greek language in the platform www.moodle.startuperasmus.eu that can be found in the website of the project https://startuperasmus.eu/. Finally, once the course has been developed, a set of training through webinars for training of trainers has been organised, and thus contribute to further dissemination of project results. They can also be found integrated in the course and in the platform. In order to further strengthen the outcomes of the project we organised conferences in all the partner countries of the project where we reached more than 250 stakeholders. The project's consortium consists of five partners from Spain, Turkey, Poland, Bulgaria and Greece. The main target group of the project was represented by adult educators who have been trained during the project lifetime and after with dissemination activities. Final beneficiaries can be defined as adult educators for whom there is the online course, representatives of municipalities who benefit from better understanding of smart cities/villages concept and finally the general public that directly benefit from smart solutions in their municipalities. The project started in 01/09/2020 and lasted for 28 months until 31/12/2022.
The aim of the project is to prepare a course for trainers who will be able to give municipalities a clear and comprehensive explanation of what smart cities/towns are in their specific environment. In addition, they will also be able to train other trainers and thus contribute to a wider dissemination of the project results. The overall objective will be achieved through the attainment of sub-objectives which can be defined as: - curriculum development, - methodological design of the course training development, - development of physical course materials, - development of an online course.
The issue of smart cities/towns is a pressing one for all European countries. In fact, it is a global issue. The reason for this is the enormous penetration of information technologies in all aspects of human life, and managing municipalities is no exception. The Start up for Development (START UP) project focuses on the concept of smart cities/towns and the understanding of this concept by municipalities, which are the ones implementing smart solutions in their environment. It is based on the premise that the understanding of the concept of smart cities/towns by municipalities is at a low level due to the fact that the problem is too wide, the solutions even more so and there is also a lack of experts offering comprehensive solutions for municipalities. Especially those small municipalities that cannot afford to have such experts on their staff. Thus, the general idea is to create a training material to train the trainers who will then work with the municipalities promoting smart city/town solutions and their understanding.