On 8 and 9 July 2025, the SHER Programme and the Public International Business College Mitrovica (IBCM) held two important working sessions as part of their joint efforts to enhance IBCM’s institutional and strategic development. Through focused discussions and interactive engagement, the sessions addressed components essential to institutional growth, including strategic planning, capacity-building, and the refinement of development objectives.

On 8 July 2025, the first working group meeting was organized to kick off SHER’s support for the functionalization of the Center for Innovation and Transfer of Knowledge at IBCM. This session brought together the designated Working Group and the SHER expert team to identify key challenges and priorities for the Center’s development. It was agreed that expert input would focus on operationalizing the Center, through proposing a feasible model that will contribute to fostering partnerships between academia and industry, while also feeding the relevant expert input into IBCM’s broader Strategic Planning process.

On 9 July 2025, a dedicated workshop with the designated working group on strategic planning took place. The session served as a crucial milestone in the institution’s ongoing strategic development process, with focused discussions aimed at finalizing the SWOT analysis, refining the institutional vision statement, and drafting the strategic development objectives. Participants actively contributed insights and perspectives, ensuring the outputs reflected a shared understanding of internal capacities and external challenges, as well as a clearly articulated long-term institutional aspiration. The strategic objectives were framed to support coherent planning, prioritization, and performance measurement across key operational areas. These are key components in a participatory and ownership-driven planning methodology supported by SHER.

Both activities are carried out under the framework of the signed MoU between SHER and IBCM.

SHER is funded by the Austrian Development Agency, co-financed by MESTI, and implemented by WUS Austria, ZSI and OeAD.