The workshop is a pre-Conference event of the TAIEX conference “Emigration  Issues in the Western Balkans - joint approach to linking migration and development of the countries of origin“ of Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Department for Emigration/Diaspora.

The rationale of the workshop is based on the fact that

• highly skilled professionals from the fields of science, technology, business etc. have emigrated from Southeast European countries in extremely high numbers
• this “brain drain” is a substantial systemic problem of science, education and innovation systems in Southeast Europe and therefore
• ways have to be found to reconnect highly skilled emigrants with sustainable development efforts in their countries of origin

At the 2009 workshop the focus has been on Brain gain programmes, virtual mobility and diaspora knowledge networks, Web 2.0 opportunities for cross sectoral and international e-collaboration and Web 2.0 applications in RTD governance as a new way / new culture of participatory and interactive delivery of public services.

The aim of the 2011 follow-up workshop is put at lifting the effort of "using contemporary ICT to enhance scientific diaspora's contribution to the overall development of the countries of origin" to a higher level with

• the proposal of forging a multi-stakeholder partnership with diaspora on knowledge based sustainable development in Southeast Europe,
• looking at the feasibility of establishing a network of Global Challenges (GloCha) centers in SEE countries as new institutional framework for organizing such a multi-stakeholder partnership for sustainable development that would include diaspora
• outlining a common information and documentation system for documentation and collaborative (web 2.0) assessment of the relevance of the different types of contributions (knowledge, volunteerism/time, funding, in kind contributions, ..) for sustainable development and
• to explore possibilities for developing public finance instruments (matching funds, tax benefits, etc.) that would encourage engagement of foreign/diaspora and domestic stakeholders in such collaborative sustainable development efforts.

Date: 12 October 2011