Successful Barents grant programme
The Norwegian Barents Secretariat’s grant programme has been evaluated by the NIBR institute. Project manager Jørn Holm-Hansen says that the grant program has been very successful in achieving its objectives.
The evaluation report was this week presented in Tromsø.
The Norwegian Barents Secretariat has a solid project management experience and its competence on Russian issues is significant, said senior researcher Jørn Holm-Hansen in his presentation of the evaluation report. It was carried out by the Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research (NIBR), and Holm-Hansen has been the project manager.
The Barents Secretariat’s grant programme helps fund Norwegian-Russian cooperation projects in the Barents Region. Since the start in 1993 more then 3000 projects has been approved for program funding.
In its evaluation report NIBR has in detail studied 14 of the projects funded by the Norwegian Barents Secretariat. More than 55 interviews of Russian and Norwegian project participants were done in the process. In addition NIBR have performed an electronic survey with 140 participants from Norway and Russia.
The results show that almost all survey participants responded that the projects had been successful in achieving their objectives. Most projects were also successful in establishing good Norwegian-Russian contact networks.
