On November 9 and 10, 2017, a Kick-Off Meeting was held in Germany at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, the Coordinator of the TIGRIS Project. The kick-off meeting was specialised for the Consortium partners of the Erasmus+ Capacity Builing in Higher Education EU-funded project "TIGRIS" (Transfer of Good Practices & Reinforcement of Internationalization Strategies in Kurdistan). The project has been funded within the framework of the EU Erasmus+ Capacity Building program in Higher Education and aims at the further development and internationalization of the higher education sector. The EU will support it over the next 3 years (from 2017-2020) with 956,000,00 €.

In addition to the participation of the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research (MHESR) and Kurdistan Institution for Strategic Studies and Scientific Research (KISSR), a delegation from 8 partners Universities in Kurdistan region were participated in this meeting. These partners were (Charmo University, Duhok Ploy-technic University, Erbil Poly-technic University, Salahadin University University of Sulaimani, Sulaimani Poly-technic University, University of Raparin, and Halabja University). Each partner was actively involved in the implementation of all project activities, the dissemination of the project results, and adherence to the overall project objectives.

Our University delegation included Prof. Dr. Salah Raza Saeed, the president of ChU and Prof. Dr. Shwan Kamal Rachid, Vice President for Scientific affair at ChU. At the first day of the meeting, Dr Shwan has presented a short introduction about Charmo University. He explained the role of our University in showing the full capacity to implement this project and cooperate with other national and international partners to introduce new study programs, joint courses, hold workshops, and conduct training sessions. Capacity-building projects in the field of higher education support the modernisation, accessibility and internationalisation of higher education in Kurdistan region. We acknowledge the role of Ministry of Higher Education and KISSR, especially Dr. Pola Khanaqa for their direct contribution and coordinating the TIGRIS project in Kurdistan.