The AHKB-lead project consortium participated in a one day workshop co-organized by the EU Delegation to China and Mongolia and the SWITCH-Asia Network Facility on 2nd July. Held in the premises of the EU Delegation in Beijing, the event gathered all SWITCH-Asia projects currently implemented in either China or Mongolia.

With a view to facilitating networking and exchange of best practices between projects, the workshop was structured in 4 different sessions: scaling up project results, financial and operational issues, communication and visibility, impact assessment.

After a welcoming address by Deputy Head of the EU Delegation Mr. Michael Pulch, EC Project Officer Mrs. Virginie de Ruyt gave an overall presentation of the SWITCH-Asia program after which SWITCH-Asia Network Facility team leader Mr. Frans Verspeek kicked-off the first working session on “SWITCH programme's role in scaling up SCP practices beyond demonstration” with an introduction of the Sustainable Consumption and Production concept, approaches and tools used by the Network Facility.
Representing AHKB as project team leader, Mr. Igor Darbo made a well-received presentation on the efforts and methods used by the project “Improving Environmental and Safety Performance in the Electrical and Electronics Industry in China” to scale up project results and activities from project design to sustainability strategy. In particular, Mr. Darbo explained how the project is gaining maximum leverage from supply chain multiplier effects through the involvement of larger companies of the sector such as Deutsche Telekom, Huawei Technology, Siemens or Hisense Ltd.  Moreover, the capacity building methodology developed by the project was illustrated by the introduction of its train the trainers activities as well as the demonstration of its e-learning platform and the first-time display of its video training modules on Occupational Health and Safety and Eco-Efficiency. 

Following an exchange of views about scaling up challenges and opportunities, SWITCH-Asia projects’ experts were given the opportunity to engage in a Q&A session with Mr. Li Yujiang from the Finance, Contracts and Audit section of the EU Delegation. Addressing a concern from several projects, Mr. Li confirmed the possibility to add project partners to a consortium and laid down both the contractual and financial conditions for such cooperation agreements amendments.  

The afternoon was then dedicated to interactive sessions and group exercises:  first Ms. Burcu Tuncer and Mr. Patrick Schroeder from the Network Facility facilitated a workshop on the SWITCH-Asia impact assessment framework and applied case study on assessing climate change mitigation impact which was also supported by a presentation by Mr. Zhang Xin from the Electric Motors project. Introduced by Ms. Silvia Sartori from “Train the Trainers” project and Ms. Huang Zhaojing from “Eco-friendly, pro-poor bamboo production”, a group discussion followed on projects’ need for better communication through an overview of good practices and successful case studies. Lead by Ms. Suzanne Muller from the Network Facility, the final workshop was dedicated to testing the SWITCH-Asia customized project web pages and represented a good opportunity for projects to learn how to autonomously update information about their activities on the Network Facility web platform.

In order to get an overview of the SWITCH-Asia program state-of-play, 1st tier projects gave individual presentations on their achieved results after 1.5 year of implementation including the Sustainable Public Procurement project (SuPPUrb) and the Sustainable Wood Processing project.