ALPRODE is aimed at promoting sustainable economic growth in Ecuador and Colombia through academic training and the improvement of employability in the field of sustainable productive development and international cooperation, within the framework of multi-stakeholder partnership schemes. The main axes of the Project are: 1.To develop an innovative training offer on sustainable development, climate change and international cooperation, consisting of courses focused on green, blue and orange economies, on responding to climate change with entrepreneurship and social responsibility actions, and on favouring international cooperation, for which there is a growing demand in Colombia and Ecuador.2.Create an Internship Programme linked to the educational offer, composed of actions that will effectively link the participating universities in Colombia and Ecuador and their students with the private, public and social sectors. This will increase the degree of employability of the students of the new courses offered. 3.Development of multi-stakeholder partnerships for sustainable development and international cooperation, involving the business world, the public and social sectors of Colombia, Ecuador, Spain, Portugal and the EU. This will improve the internationalisation and innovation processes of the participating universities and chambers of commerce.4.Creation of a virtual platform that will include the Virtual Forum for Employment (Marketplace) and the Birregional Alumni Network on sustainable development and international cooperation, which will favour the internationalisation of universities and students from Colombia and Ecuador, as well as the use of new technologies.The Consortium is made up of 11 partners from Spain, Portugal, Colombia and Ecuador, with diverse and complementary profiles, including universities, chambers of commerce and one NGO.

"The starting point of the project was the standard and widely accepted definition of internationalization as ""the process of integrating an international dimension into the teaching, research and service functions of the institution"". In our opinion, this definition does not capture the essence of a process whose ultimate goal should be to integrate the institution into the emerging global knowledge production and transfer network. In this respect DHIP conceived internationalization of HEIs as the process of integrating the institution and its stakeholders into a globalizing world. This process calls for a change in existing structures, operating modes and mind-set in order to allow the institution as a whole to join and contribute to the emerging global knowledge and learning network. The DHIP project has allowed the Latin American (LA) partners to increase their capacity of managing an internationalization process effectively and to generate a spill-over effect on the three target countries through the developed good practices and tools. This has been achieved thanks to a new tool, the Internationalization Enhancement Plan (IEP). IEP enables an integrated approach, based on a strategic vision of internationalization and on a multidimensional, integrated and recursive operating plan containing process improvement actions, services, communication tools and marketing skills. IEP also identifies milestones, deliverables, mid-term results, expected results and monitoring, and evaluation criteria.Despite the pandemic forced the Consortium to reschedule some tasks, all the activities planned in the proposal were realized:WP1: N. 7 Territorial Fora held; N. 9 video conference rooms implemented in LA;WP2: N. 9 IEPs implemented and officially approved with formal administrative act; N. 3 LA tutoring meetings;WP3: N. 9 organizational redesign of the IROs (and N. 9 IROs equipped); the development of training activities on internationalization (N. 9 Training Webinars and N. 3 study visits in Europe); N. 27 Multicultural and social events realized; N. 78 international agreements signed;WP4: quality plan definition and continuous quality monitoring; development of the Impact Evaluation System;WP5: DHIP Guidelines on internationalization in higher education; N. 18 Twinning Events; N.1 Dissemination Event and N. 1 Final Conference. WP6: effective project and financial management; constant monitoring of activities and results; continuous sharing of information. DHIP achieved the following specific objectives.1 - Developed and/or improved effective HEI internationalization strategies for each LA partner consistent with the ECHE principles and priorities through the design and implementation of IEPs.2 - Increased and/or consolidated a network of contacts and regional alliances with peers and with other institutions or associations for mobility, academic exchanges, including the use of Tuning tools, to effect the shift to student centred learning, and experience with the Latin American Reference Credit - CLAR.3 - Developed soft skills and transversal competencies and provided specialist training on strategic topics for the implementation of the IEP.4 - Developed participation, communication and networking tools able to connect HEI internationalization policies with the needs/vocations of the local production systems.5 - Promoted the dissemination of institutional strategies for internationalization based on good practices among the Latin American HEIs community and supported the development of strategic alliances with other LA and EU HEIs and the inclusion of communities of knowledge and of practice that boosted the viability of IEPs and generated new initiatives and activities."