The AER Committees are the R&D lab of AER where experiences are shared, discussed, transferred to other regions, transformed, brought back in the network and adopted by yet other regions. However, the plenary meetings don’t always do justice to the wealth of ideas and initiatives regions are implementing or want to implement.

Just do it!

Spring is coming, and at AER, spring is Action plan preparation season.

On 22 March at the AER Spring Plenaries in London, members of the three thematic Committees will develop jointly their action plans. The main idea is the following: if you want to carry out something within the network, just do it! Any idea is welcome!

The actions members can implement via the committees are diverse: project development, organisation of a workshop, seminar, international conference, study visit, brokerage event, breakfast briefing, webinar, collection of good practices, elaboration of a political report based on the experience of regions etc. To have it included in the AER Action Plan, regions should share their idea at the relevant Committee plenary meeting, explain how they are going to implement their action and get support from other regions.

How this will be done

Participants will be seated around round tables, where each table will work around 1 topic (or set of related topics). They will share their own ideas & develop jointly actions on the different topics the Committees are working on:

Committee 1:

• Cohesion policy: Task Force on Cohesion post 2020, contribution to the survey, dissemination, awareness raising, lobbying…
• business SMEs & investments:
  -involvement of regions in the Silver Economy Awards (SEED project)
  -Follow-up on photonics: what should be done next?
  -E-health innovation, innovative SMEs: after the e-health event, what should now be done?
  -The different new models of economy: collaborative, social and solidarity savings, circular, post cop21
  – New forms of tourism economy: e-tourism: renting by private persons (Airbnb, …) solidarity tourism….
  – Smart regions
  – Other proposals

• rural development: should something specific be developed this year? If so which region would like to take the lead? Lobbying with the European Countryside Movement, other proposals…
• energy, climate change & the circular economy: suggestions are welcome! Dissemination of the report on energy security, collaboration with the R20, with other stakeholders, projects…
• transport & mobility: good practice sharing on connectivity, the use of big data, sustainable transports…

Committee 2: Inclusion, social entrepreneurship & inclusive entrepreneurship, digital transformation in health, leadership for change management in health, integrated e-care systems, child healthcare & prevention, follow-up for the MOCHA project, cooperation within EIP-AHA, involvement in the Silver Economy Awards (SEED project)

Committee 3: Cultural heritage (developing a project), culture for inclusion of migrants (handbook), School dropouts (dissemination of the handbook), youth policies, mobility & youth employability, youth wellbeing & inclusion, youth participation, youth entrepreneurship

The 3 plenary meetings will be held separately and consecutively so that members are able to participate in all meetings, allowing for synergies & cooperation between Committees
Members of the AER Youth Regional Network, the Summer Academy and the Eurodyssey programmes are invited to join the process as well so that they can provide ideas on how their work could integrate and feed the work of the committees.

At the end of the session the different actions will be brought together on a flip-chart and organised according to the 3 main categories:

-Lobbying

-Projects

-Good practice exchange

This document will then be adopted as the Committee’s action plan.

Get involved!

In order to get involved AER members can

• ask to join the AER Committees online communities in order to already share ideas with other members
• identify the needs they have in their region which could be addressed via AER
• define an activity they would like to carry out in the Committees, think about how other members could contribute and benefit from this activity, share the idea at the plenary meeting
• support other members proposing joint actions via the online communities and at the plenary meetings.

photo credits: Jakob Owens @unsplash https://unsplash.com