On 11 December, Nooruse Maja had the pleasure of welcoming students from the University of Tartu Pärnu College. This visit has become a valued tradition: each year, the project management lecturer from the College brings students to Nooruse Maja to gain a practical, real-life insight into project implementation beyond textbooks and theoretical models.
During the visit, the students were introduced to two international projects currently coordinated by Nooruse Maja. The COMBATHATE project, funded by the CERV Programme, focuses on addressing hate speech and hate crime through inclusive support mechanisms and awareness-raising activities. The SEED Future project, funded by Erasmus+, concentrates on sustainability, community empowerment, and future-oriented skills development through international cooperation.
The session was highly interactive. Students asked numerous practical and critical questions about project design, funding rules, partnerships, reporting obligations, and day-to-day project management. In addition to sharing our achievements, we openly discussed challenges, setbacks, and lessons learned, highlighting that successful project work also involves adapting to unexpected situations and learning from mistakes.
Special emphasis was placed on the full project life cycle: from the initial idea and needs analysis to application writing, partnership building, implementation, monitoring, dissemination, and final reporting. We discussed how essential it is to prepare projects thoroughly, plan activities and budgets with precision, and implement everything exactly as agreed with funders—while still remaining flexible enough to respond to real-world developments.
For the students, the visit offered a concrete example of how European-funded projects function in practice within a community-based organisation. For Nooruse Maja, these meetings are equally valuable, as they foster dialogue with future project managers and contribute to bridging the gap between academic learning and hands-on project work.
This visit once again confirmed the importance of cooperation between educational institutions and community organisations in strengthening project management competencies and promoting evidence-based, responsible project implementation.
