International Business College Mitrovica (IBC-M) was founded in 2010 by the Dutch NGO SPARK at the request of Kosovo’s Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology, with donations from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Swiss Development Cooperation, DFID, the European Commission, and the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology of Kosovo. It operated under the auspices of SPARK for 8 years. IBC-M became a Foundation NGO (not for profit) in March 2018. Its current Donor is EU.
IBC-M is an institution involved in this project as a multi-tasked WBC HEI. As IBC-M does not have a medical curriculum, the question of the point of this institution’s participation in the project may be raised for persons outside the project. For this reason, we describe this segment in more detail. MCPB modules are not a learning model specifically modelled only for the medical sciences. Their application is universal for different areas of education. IBC-M has a curriculum in the field of environmental protection, which monitors the consequences of environmental impact on human health. The program of this course coincides with the program of the Hygiene and Medical Ecology course (within preventive medicine), for which MCPB modules will be developed within the project. In this context, the project team saw a chance to open the door through the application of MCPB modules in IBC-M curricula, first for all HEIs that have similar programs (environmental protection, occupational safety, ecology and health, etc.), and then for other HEIs from the WBC area to start implementing the MCPB module in their curricula and thus implement the latest forms of learning from EU HEIs in the teaching of WBC HEIs. Involving IBC-M in the project in this way will enable further spread of the idea of application of MCPB modules in different areas of education and further contribute to the visibility, sustainability and impact of the results of this project.
In addition to the above, IBC-M is recognized for its capacity in the organization of management and especially in the management of environmental issues. As the Erasmus+ Program Guide for project applications requires special attention to be paid to the area of environmental impact and adequate measures for its protection when planning project activities, the project partners decided that one of the board members has a special responsibility in this segment. Precisely because of the understanding of the importance of the project’s impact on the environment, IBC-M will have the obligation to monitor the environmental effects of project activities on the environment, and propose and take measures to minimize these effects.
IBC-M is extremely highly profiled HEI in the field of management as well. He also expressed great potential in participating in previous Tempus and Erasmus projects. As the conditions of the call clearly indicate that project management must be one of the key project activities that will meet all the criteria, IBC-M will take a special place in this segment as well. The project team decided to give these specific tasks to one HEI in order not to subcontract the tasks that HEIs can perform outside of HEIs.