Our experience

Since 2002, MENON has been active in supporting international cooperation programmes in fields such as Information Society development, Science and Technology, ICT research, and academic cooperation, with a specific but not limited focus on Latin America, the Caribbean and South East Asia. The MENON perspective supports an ‘open access’ approach to international cooperation. This encourages participation in collaborative research by as wide a spectrum of stakeholders as possible. MENON is active in setting up and maintaining these networks and in harnessing them to help promote the exchange of research results and innovative practices. We also support evidence-based policy development by making research results and practices available to policy-makers. Examples of this kind of work include: the @LIS Programme, the VALUE, WINDS-LA and WINDS-Caribe projects, the SINCERE and the ACCESS actions. In turn, MENON has supported the creation and is the hosting organisation of the VIT@LIS Network, the major Eurolatinamerican network for the development of the Information Society.

Our vision

In our vision, stakeholders networks and communities must be considered the central component of any international cooperation process. Only by applying networking methods as primary tools of international cooperation, in research as well as in education or in aid cooperation, we can put knowledge at the centre of the process. These networks shall be the drivers, the monitors, and finally the owners of all the cooperation process, and should be based on concepts such as trust, ownership of results, and continuous involvement of users. The model is strongly based and relies on ICT-based technological and human networks which give priority to knowledge management, canalisation of social capital in and through the internet and implementation of multilateral actions with the participation of policy actors, civil society, companies, universities and other agents.

Our projects in the area:

• ACCESS - Partnership building and mutual valorisation among South East Asian and European Universities
• WINDS Caribe - Widening IST Networking Development Support in the Caribbean
• VALUE - Partnership building and mutual valorisation among Latin American and European Universities
• WINDS Latin America - Widening IST Networking Development Support in Latin America
• SINCERE - supporting international collaboration on Educational Research across Europe, Latin America and South-East Asia
• @LIS International Stakeholders Network - building a community of stakeholders across Europe and Latin America on Information Society