Porto travel journal

Last week our members of Porto University hosted all members of the BEESE Pro Bono Project to work on the next steps of the activities.

It was the second physical meeting of the group (after the kick-off meeting in Madrid in October 2018) and it aimed to exchange the work done by the members and to coordinate the next efforts of the Project.

6th March 2019

The first day, we had the honour to be welcome by the Vice-Rector of the Porto University. Later on, András, from ÖKA, -the coordinator organisation of the project-, shared the Agenda of the 3 days meeting. Andrea, from Work for Social (organisation in charge of coordinating the application), made a presentation of the overview of the Project and the following activities.

After working on a Design Thinking session facilitated by Pablo (UAM), Andrea (WFS) and András (ÖKA) to think about the future sustainability of the Project, we had the chance to hear the experience of 5 Porto University students about their participation as volunteers and as pro bono consultants.

Regarding the Research on students motivations to do pro bono (our first main activity), Luis and Pablo (from UAM) presented their initial results with the data available so far. The most amazing result was that only 9% of the consulted students had heard the word “pro bono”.

7th March 2019

The second day was more focus on the next steps to be done in our second main activity: the pro bono programmes in the university framework. Pro Bono Lab, Junior Enterprise and Porto University shared with the rest of the members their experience of their students pro bono programmes.

Later on, we split up in three groups in order to categorize the three main pilots that are going to be carried out for the first time in this semester:

• Short-term pro bono programmes: they are going to be piloted in France and Bulgaria.
• Medium-term pro bono programmes: they are going to be piloted in Spain and Portugal.
• Long-term pro bono programmes: they are going to be piloted in Hungary.

Later on, the focus was the communication and dissemination of the Project. How can we reach new audiences? How can spread the word of our results to other countries and Universities?

And after too much work, our hosts had planned to invite us to a Porto wine tasting. We learnt that this wine has the most ancient denomination of origin of the world and that it has a really great combination with dark chocolate!

8th March 2019 – Women’s Day

The last day of the meeting was also the anniversary of our colleague Deni, from UNWE, and we celebrated it with a really nice cake!

It was the day to work on the work code of the Project and to answer all the doubts of the next steps on admin and each members’ tasks.

After finishing our great work, we went to our visit to the City Hall and the guided visit to the city. We learnt many interesting things and curiosities of the city. Thanks Albino and Paulo, from Porto University for this invitation!

Thanks to all members for your ideas, knowledge and good vibes during the whole meeting! Looking forward to our next meeting in Budapest!

You can find more pictures of the Meeting in our Facebook page.