The Vita Global Project – an Erasmus+ Capacity Building project coordinated by the University of Tarragona with support from OBREAL Global Observatory – held its third major project meeting in Santiago de Chile (9-11 October), co-hosted by the University of Chile and the University of Talca, which are both partners. The meeting gathered both representatives of international relations offices as well as academic staff leading fields related to viticulture, oenology, wine marketing and wine tourism from Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Georgia, South Africa, Portugal, France, Italy and Spain. The project has made considerable strides in developing collaborative study modules, which will be soon implemented in Partner universities as part of existing study programmes. The Santiago meeting was an essential step forward in a) revising the state of play of the six study modules that have been developed, with European support and coordination, b) clarifying and discussing how such modules could be implemented in existing programmes, c) mapping ‘coaching’ and training needs of the partner universities for the implementation.
The Vita Global project is unique in that instead of simply building a joint programme in the viticulture field, it aims at providing tools for internationisalising and rendering more flexible the curricula, which partners can use and adopt in different ways. It essentially promotes the concept of study modules that are co-created between partner universities in very diverse parts of the world, with many common challenges when it comes to the role of viticulture and oenology in local development.