Vilnius, Lithuania, 20th of June 2023.
In the framework of the 6th consortium meeting of INCENTIVE, which took place in Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, in Lithuania, on the 19th and 20th of June, representatives of the four Citizen Science Hubs of the project signed a landmark Memorandum of Collaboration to mutually commit their Hubs towards post-project sustainability.
The MoC, known also as the “Vilnius Agreement”, falls under the project’s mission to secure the post-grant activities and prosperity of each Citizen Science Hub. It comes on top of the internal Action Plans that are being currently formulated within each Hub at the regional level for grounding RRI principles within the organisations and their ecosystems. The representatives of the Hubs have essentially signed the MoC to stimulate cross-fertilisation of the established Citizen Science Hub’s communities.
The Vilnius Agreement, which was elaborated by the SDA Bocconi, aims to deepen the cooperation between the Hubs towards the achievement of the following objectives:
- to raise awareness among policy-makers and the public towards the potential of Citizen Science as a lever for change and to ground RRI in society.
- to improve the overall quality of the European CS ecosystem, disseminating tools and methods such as the Monitoring and Evaluation Framework, the Manual for Citizen Science Community Building, the Methodological Guide and Toolkit for setting up Citizen Science Hubs, and the INCENTIVE Replication Guide and Toolkit.
- to support enhanced exchanges between the Parties on policy insights and funding opportunities and facilitate the sharing of good practices between them.
- to create synergies by organising common actions or events and making the best use of each Party’s strengths and capacities.
By signing the MoC, the Hubs have agreed to consider cooperation by various means, such as joint events, seminars, workshops, joint awareness-raising campaigns, exchange of information and past experiences, as well as staff visits on a short-term basis.
The co-created Action Plans, along with the respective signed Memorandums and the MoC will be documented in the “Action Plans for sustaining the Citizen Science Hubs – Memorandum of Collaboration” report, which will be delivered by M36 and become accessible on the INCENTIVE website.
The INCENTIVE partnership hails the signing of the MoC as a key step for securing and diffusing the legacy of the project across other European research centers and universities towards the institutionalisation of Citizen Science.