D4.3 – Capacity Building Plan

Acting as a messenger and conveying awareness-raising messages to national and regional stakeholders, the NATI00NS project will assist the Mission during most of its first “induction and pilot” phase. Capacity Building (CB) is a crucial component of the NATI00NS project. The main objective of these activities, led by the European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL), is to support applicants interested in applying to the 2023 and 2024 Mission calls for proposals to create consortia of Soil Health LLs and LHsto address soil health challenges. The efficient delivery of Capacity Building activities will support the development and submission of high-quality proposals to the first two sets of calls for LL projects, thus directly contributing to the success of the Soil Mission.
The NATI00NS Capacity Building gathers the project’s training and guidance activities for the applicants to the LL open calls, making available online support material suitable to address the questions of stakeholders related to the Mission LL call topics, criteria for Soil Health LLs, and the Soil Missions objectives interpreted for specific land use types.
The Capacity Building support of NATI00NS will be provided at two levels:

•  Direct support to applicants is foreseen through a set of training and guiding activities, including the delivery of online support material. These activities primarily include:

o Five factsheets focussing on LL basics, information on the LLs topics, and soil health
objectives and particularities across four specific land uses (agricultural, urban,
industry, and forestry); 
o Four webinars focussing on the constituency of the Living Labs methodology, the LL
application process, and updated information on the 2023 calls results;
o Six thematic webinars covering co-creation experiences in cutting-edge subjects and
soil health.

• In parallel, specific support and training activities are foreseen for NATI00NS partners and external intermediate actors that will indirectly further support the applicants through mentoring activities. Helping these actors become better equipped to support the applicants will ensure a harmonized, fair, high-quality, and equal approach of NATI00NS to all applicants. These activities primarily include Train-the-Trainers sessions for mentors and ad-hoc trainings to NATI00NS partners. 

Additional NATI00NS actions will contribute to expanding the knowledge base of LL applicants, complementing the specific Capacity Building activities. These activities include National Engagement Events and the implementation of a Helpdesk.
This document is primarily targeted to potential future LL applicants and sister projects and it
presents the plan and strategy for the Capacity Building activities to be implemented within
NATI00NS. The document is structured in five different chapters:

• Introduction which provides an overview of the role of LLs as an agent of co-creation and
  the benefits of the LL methodology
•  Chapter 1 – NATI00NS Capacity Building providing an overview of the Capacity Building
  strategy, including the planned timeline for the activities and accessibility to develop
  material
• Chapter 2 – NATI00NS Capacity Building Activities that describes each CB activities planned
  under NATI00NS, as well as their related content development plan and implementation
  strategy
• Chapter 3 – Key Performance Indicators and Impact outlining the key performance
  indicators that will be monitored along the project implementation to track progress and
  impact of the different CB activities, and
• Chapter 4 – Conclusions and Next Steps that offers a summary of the reflections on the
  performed planning, also outlining the activities to be carried out in the upcoming months
  to ensure the correct delivery of the project activities.

The plan presented in this document is to be considered as a living document that will continue to be updated, evaluated, and revised internally based on feedbacks and requests of potential applicants, as well as based on the evolution of the EU Soil Mission and overall landscape. The report demonstrates that the planning and implementation process is well underway for NATI00NS Capacity Building activities and great progress has been made so far to roll out the activities.