Increasing SME participation in the ERA
It is also imperative that Europe put its best minds to work on resolving the environmental and energy challenges of today and tomorrow. The SME Environment project, which received EU funding, aimed to increase the participation of SMEs in the EU’s Framework Programmes from New Member States as well as Candidate Countries. The first task was to assess the current situation and then to develop a strategy to reach out to SMEs active in fields concerning the environment and energy. Project partners also exploited the Internet in order to reach as large an audience as possible and an interactive website was created to provide e-training. Several online courses have been posted to the site. An initial course supplies general information about the Framework Programmes, including details about which parts address environmental and energy issues. Next up is proposal writing to help managers from SMEs without much experience in this arena put together a quality submission. Finally, the e-training modules cover the entire project life-cycle with subsequent courses on contract negotiation and project management. Building a strong, balanced consortium is also extremely important, therefore the SME Environment website also provides services for searching for partners. To this end, a comprehensive database with contact information for SMEs was constructed. None of the project's activities would have been of any value if SMEs had not been made aware of the website. An extensive publicity campaign involving email communication, leaflets and information days was carried out. The results speak for themselves as the website received more than 100 visitors per day on average. In addition, over 200 SMEs completed the e-training and many went on to submit proposals to the Framework Programmes. Finally, it should be noted that a high percentage of the beneficiaries of the services were women.