Purpose of the APCMEF

The APC Member Learning and Exchange Fund (APCMEF) aims to support member driven skills-sharing, internships, and planning for collaboration among APC members. Online collaboration can be very powerful, but it has limitations. The APC network has grown significantly in size and geographic reach during the last few years. And while this increases opportunities for working together, it makes facilitating collaboration and exchange effectively more challenging. The APCMEF supports APC member and staff face-to-face meetings on site, when effective collaboration requires it. Its goal is to make it possible for members to visit each other for activities such as:

• skill sharing or training;
• emergency technical assistance;
• problem solving;
• technical development;
• project planning and development;
• strategic planning, and

• service and product development.

APCMEF also supports (since August 2008) travel to events organised by others (e.g. conferences and workshops) when a member exchange is organised as part of the event, and the APC network can benefit from the exchange outputs as described below.

What does the APCMEF support?

The fund covers only travel (visa costs, train or air fares, fuel if people use their own vehicles) and daily subsistence (meals and accommodation). Member staff time, rental of office spaces and other onsite costs are not covered.

Outcomes of collaboration supported by APCMEF

Members involved in the member exchange who receive support document the process using a pre-designed template. All outputs of the learning and exchange are shared among APC members. Such outputs are stories, training materials, documentation, lessons learned from project collaboration etc. APC members are also encouraged to share their experience using various thematic APC mailing lists, the APC blog, etc. That way the APC network can not only benefit from the member exchange, but also potentially contribute to projects you are working on with your host organisation.

Who is eligible for APCMEF support?

The APC MEF fund is available only to APC member organisations.

More information on APCMEF: write to mef-at-apc.org or directly to MEF coordinator Karel Novotný at karel-at-apc.org