Since July 2nd to 5th first trainings were held within the “Doctoral Programmes in Public Health and Social Science (DPPHSS)” Project /No: 597977-EPP-1-2018-1-AM-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP/.
The trainings were devoted to the development of the research skills of the partner universities’ representatives. They also had an aim to introduce the PhD structure in Romania, particularly at the University of Babes Bolyai, which is a consortium member of the Project. Representatives of the partner universities, which are Yerevan State Medical University, Yerevan State University, I. Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University and University of Georgia, attended the trainings. The consortium members from the University Of Applied Sciences Of Upper Austria, Slovak Medical University in Bratislava, University of Gothenburg (Sweden) and Babes Bolyai University (Romania) participated in the coordination meeting, which was held at the last day of the trainings.
Activities Conducted during the Trainings: Brief Description
Day 1.
First day of the trainings was devoted to the presentation of the PhD structure in Romanian Universities. The presentation was held by the representatives of both Public Health and Social Work departments of Babes Boylai University. The attenders of the trainings had an opportunity to discuss the main issues they were interested in and in which they needed some clarification for the successful development of the PhD program in their home universities.
The continuation of the training’s day was devoted to analyzing the social and psychological problems of people addicted to alcohol and studying the role of the Anonymous Alcoholics Group in providing assistance for overcoming addiction problems.
The trainings were held by the members of the Central European Project. The trainers had specially arrived from different countries for holding trainings in Anonymous Alcoholics’ session.
The training was finalized with a group work in which the training attenders had also been actively involved. The group work was directed towards showing and explaining how AA worked in practice and what it could give to its members.
The first day of the trainings was finalized with the visit to the gastroenterology clinic, where the representatives of the partner universities had a meeting with the staff members of the clinic and discussed how the clinic organized the provision of combined medical and social services to the patients. The meeting was held also by the members of the NGO, which works with the people addicted to alcohol in Cluj Napoka (Romania). They shared their experience and presented their vision on how social and medical services can be combined for providing effective assistance to the people who face this kind of problems.
Day 2.
Second day of the trainings was devoted to the discussion of other social problems, like social exclusion and poverty are. For facilitating the discussion on those issues, members of the NGO working with Roma people in Cluj County attended the meeting. They provided overall view on what kind of problems Roma people had in their everyday life and what kind of services the NGO provided them.
The last part of the trainings was directed towards discussing the practice of Romanian colleagues on the research methods implementing within the PhD programs in Sociology and Public Health.
Day 3.
During the third day of the trainings the participants had an opportunity to discuss another social issue like the disability is. The discussion was aimed at providing the participants necessary information on how situation in Romania, particularly in the Cluj County was and what the state and civil society initiated to do for assisting people with disability. The topic was focused especially on the issues of the children with disability.
The presentation was held by the head of the Hans Spalinger Association in Cluj, who provided detailed information on how the center organizes its activities and what other plans and new initiations they have for the nearest future. During the training the participants discussed so called “service learning” research method and analyzed how it could be applied in the PhD programs in their countries.
The training was organized in an interactive way. During it the attenders had a group work devoted to the analysis of a concrete social or medical issues and analyzing how they could be studied with the implementation of service learning methods.
By the end of the training day the attenders and trainers had a debriefing of the themes discussed during that day.
Day 4.
The last day of the trainings was devoted to the students’ PhD researches’ presentations. PhD students at Babes Bolyai University both from Social Work and Public Health department presented their researches’ methodology and the results of their work. The aim of the meeting was to provide overall vision on how the PhD work can be organized in Social Work and Public Health areas.
Coordination Meeting
The last part of the 4th day the project coordination meeting was held. All the representatives of the consortium’s management teams’ attended the meeting. During the meeting the activities which the partner universities had already conducted within the Project were discussed. The participants of the meetings described also the steps they were going to implement for accomplishing the tasks and the goals of the Project and got important agreement on the future trainings, Project requirements and budgeting.
Other Activities
The participants of the trainings in Romania had an opportunity to be engaged in social and cultural activities as well. They had a city tour in Cluj Napoca and visited sightseeing of Cluj County.
