Activation of the internship office at University of Mosul (WP2 – Internship framing) In order to support the introduction of internship programs the Iraqi HEIs, the workflow of the BANUU project, coordinated by University of Bologna, included the creation and organisation of internship offices in the Humanities faculties of the partner universities in Iraq, including University of Mosul. Created with the support of the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union, their final aim is to serve as a national best practice to be adopted by other academic institutions. The partner universities were requested to find an adequate space within the respective faculties of Humanities, with minimum furnishing (desks, chairs) while, the BANUU project provided the necessary equipment to activate the office: University of Mosul received 5 laptops, all with Microsoft Office 2019 package included, 2 printers and 1 projector. This equipment, delivered in 2021 (with some delay related to the Covid-19 pandemic), represented an initial but fundamental step in making the offices positively able to organise and manage internship for the students of their respective universities. The creation of the internship offices is part of a larger workflow, which included the training of 26 selected administrative staff members from all the Iraqi partner universities (because of the Covid-19 pandemic the training was organised online), in order to have skilled personnel able to manage the offices and provide adequate support to the students, especially for the drafting of internship agreements. Moreover, the BANUU project selected 3 specific sectors encompassing the potential field of activity of the internships: Preventive Archaeology (PA), Cultural Tourist Guides (CTG) and Cultural Heritage Management (CHM). Based on this framework, the purchase of 150 books on these specific topics for each Iraqi partner university (together with 50 books on improvement of entrepreneurship skills of students), including University of Mosul, was included into the activities’ plan. The internship offices activated as part of the BANUU project have already provided unprecedented opportunities to the Iraqi students, allowing most of them to step into the job market for the first time, to gain experience and skills and to build a solid network for their future beyond university.

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