PONCHO Project: Internationalization of Latin American peripheral Universities through sustainable integration and inclusive implementation of International Relations Offices

The PONCHO Project, approved under the Erasmus+ program for capacity building in 2015, aims to promote the internationalization of Latin American peripheral Universities, through the implementation of their technical, academic and institutional capacities, on a National, Regional and International level. The PONCHO Consortium is composed of 4 European Universities from 4 different European countries (Spain, France, Portugal and Poland) and 21 Universities from 7 Latin America countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay). The specificity and innovative aspects of the PONCHO Project is that it is mainly composed by small Universities, geographically located in peripheral areas and with no or little experience in the European Union and Capacity Building projects for the Latin American partners. Special focus is on the Universities of peripheral areas of the region, whose geographical position or total volume of students have not allowed them yet to develop their internationalization process in the same way as capital universities or major universities of the area. The PONCHO consortium is then mainly composed by Universities having no experience in Capacity Building projects and willing to increase their internationalization at institutional and academic level and not only through mobility programmes. The PONCHO project is therefore an opportunity for them to train their IRO technical staff in the different phases of the internationalization process and through the PONCHO platform, the use of ICTs and social media, and the activities designed to develop their international marketing; university partners will then be ready to stand at the same level as the more experienced Latin American universities. For the final activities of the project, which finishes in the first semester of this year, a PONCHO International Week, composed of a student camp and a fair, are being planned for May in Paraguay. The impacts of the project on the internationalization process of two of the participating Brazilian universities (UFCSPA and UFGD) will be presented.