Odesa State Agrarian University as a partner of the project “Digital blue economy and innovation acceleration network» (Project acronym: DBAN; Project number: 101077599), which is financed by European Union through European Maritime, Fisheries and Aquaculture Fund (European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency) is pleased to announce the successful completion of the above project.
The overall project goal owas to create a regional digital innovation blue network for the Black Sea region, which was initially implemented between the partner cities of Burgas, Batumi and Odesa.
DBAN became a roadmap that brought together blue economy activities from partner country regions, focusing and implementing activities to promote and accelerate innovative business ideas for blue growth and innovation through a synergistic environmental, social and economic approach.
OSAU participated in all 7 work packages of the project and successfully implemented the tasks within each of them, in particular:
Work Package 1: Project management and coordination – successfully performed the management function of a partner under the leadership of the lead partner;
Work Package 2: Regional Blue growth strategy with smart specialization local action plans – provided input to relevant documents as requested by Responsible Partner;
Work Package 3: Blue Innovation Accelerator DBAN and pilots – participated in the discussion on the creation of a suitable platform, stakeholder engagement, and implemented a mentoring scheme at the local level;
Work Package 4: Organization and implementation of Blue growth Competitions and Hackathons – held the UA-BGrowth hackathon – a contest for the best business ideas for projects and startups of the innovative Blue Economy of the Odesa region;
Work Package 5: Increase of Capacity for Blue Economy Actors – developed and conducted “Digitalization for entrepreneurship entities” courses for three groups of stakeholders – coastal and maritime tourism, fishing and aquaculture, and maritime transport;
Work Package 6: Project management and coordination – Blue eco mar mobile application structure project was discussed at the meeting of DBAN consortium partners, requested information was provided to the relevant platform;
Work Package 7: Dissemination and communication – organizing a large-scale communication and promotional campaign – OSAU – held the start and final press conferences of the project, the opening conference of the UA-BGrowth hackathon, as well as a 2-day event for communication and exchange of innovations for the promotion of the region and DBAN – Odesa Blue Innovation Expo
