The promotional campaign regarding the First Call successfully completed with a Partner Search Forum in Nis, Serbia

The Partner Search Forum took place on the 20^th of October, 2015 in Nis, Serbia. More than 140 participants from Bulgaria and Serbia took part in the event. The goal of the forum was to give the opportunity to all organizations, that would like to apply with a project proposal under the Programme, but do not have partners, to establish such relations and to realize future partnerships and joint activities.

During the first part of the event, representatives of the Joint Secretariat and the National Authority presented the basic principles, rules, and recommendations related to the establishment and implementation of successful partnership within the Programme. The main topics of the presentation were:

• Factors for successful partnership;
• How to find a project partner;
• The responsibilities of the Lead Partner and of the Project Partner/s;
• Challenges to successful partnership;
• Basic steps to establishing successful partnership cooperation.

During the second part of the event, representatives of the Joint Secretariat coordinated focus groups for discussion under each of the three priority axis, and the potential applicants briefly introduced themselves and their project proposal ideas to the group. Since the working languages of the forum were Bulgarian and Serbian, representatives of the Joint Secretariat provided simultaneous translation during the networking session.

The Partner Search Forum marked the end of the Info Days promotional campaign under First Call for project proposals. The campaign included two kick-off events, five info days in Bulgaria, four Info days in Serbia, and the Partner Search Forum in Nis. The campaign attracted significant public and media attention, especially at the kick-off events and the forum in Nis, reaching nearly 800 participants in total. Almost 91% of the participants at the info days gave very positive feedback regarding the campaign through the anonymous surveys organized at each event: out of the 211 anonymously filled-in surveys at the Info days in Bulgaria, 191 gave the highest rating for the event quality while 20 gave the satisfactory grade and no negative grades in any degree.

The deadline for submission of project proposals is January 18^th 2016, 16:00 h. local time in Bulgaria, at the address indicated in the Guidelines for Applicants.