Programme: Erasmus+ Higher VET Students Internship Programme Current cohort: IES Virgen de los Reyes, Seville, Spain | June–August 2026 Mentor: Franz Kadiri

What We Do as a Host Organisation

Center for Projects Plovdiv has been active in the Erasmus+ ecosystem for over 15 years — as project coordinator, partner organisation, and host. Hosting international students and young professionals is one of the most direct expressions of what CPP stands for: learning that happens through contact with real work, real organisations, and real European contexts.As an Erasmus+ host, CPP receives students and young professionals from partner institutions across Europe and integrates them into its active project environment. This is not a shadow programme. Participants work alongside CPP staff on live projects, attend meetings, contribute to deliverables, and engage with the cultural and civic life of Plovdiv.The competences we develop in mobility participants reflect CPP's own cross-sector profile:

• EU project management — understanding funding logic, application processes, partner coordination, and reporting
• Cultural programming — how cultural initiatives are designed, financed, and delivered at local and European level
• Entrepreneurial thinking — applying strategic and financial reasoning to real creative sector challenges
• Intercultural competence — working and communicating across languages, organisational cultures, and national contexts

Why Plovdiv

Plovdiv is not an accidental choice of location. It is one of Bulgaria's most culturally active cities — home to a growing creative district, a thriving festival scene, a legacy of European Capital of Culture 2019, and a network of civil society organisations working at the intersection of culture, education, and community development.For international participants, Plovdiv offers something that larger capitals cannot: a human-scale city where cultural life is visible, accessible, and genuinely community-rooted. The Plovdiv 2019 Foundation's Festival Summerprogramme — over 30 events running across the city from spring to autumn — gives participants direct access to a live laboratory of cultural management in practice.That proximity to real cultural activity is built into how CPP designs its host programmes, not treated as a background feature.

Current Programme: VET Students from Seville, Spain

In June 2026, CPP welcomed four VET students from IES Virgen de los Reyes in Seville as part of the Erasmus+ Higher VET Students Internship Programme. The students will remain in Plovdiv through August 2026, with CPP co-founder Franz Kadiri serving as designated mentor.Their programme combines day-to-day involvement in CPP's project work with a structured learning assignment developed specifically for this cohort: a festival business plan built on direct fieldwork across Festival Summer 2026.Rather than designing a festival in the abstract, the students attend real events, observe how they function operationally and financially, and use that primary research as the foundation for their own concept — which they then develop into a full business plan and defend in a pitch to a simulated grant committee. The assignment is designed to mirror the real decisions a cultural manager or entrepreneur would face: audience analysis, financial modelling, risk management, competitive positioning, and stakeholder communication.It is one example of how CPP approaches host programmes: with purpose-built learning structures that connect directly to Plovdiv's real cultural context, and to the professional realities participants will face when they return home.

Our Approach to Hosting

CPP approaches every hosting engagement with three commitments:

Meaningful work, not observation. Participants are integrated into active projects and treated as contributors, not visitors. The learning is most durable when it comes from genuine responsibility.

Context, not just content. Understanding how a project management NGO works is useful. Understanding how it works in Plovdiv, in Bulgaria, within the European funding landscape, in 2026 — that is the specific, transferable knowledge that makes a mobility experience valuable.

A two-way exchange. Every cohort of international participants brings perspectives, questions, and professional references that sharpen CPP's own thinking. We learn from hosting as much as participants learn from being hosted.

Interested in a Mobility with CPP?

CPP is open to enquiries from VET institutions, universities, and youth organisations across Europe interested in placing students or young professionals with us. We work across Erasmus+ KA1 mobility strands and can discuss tailored programme structures depending on the participant profile and learning objectives.

Contact: culture.scene@gmailcom

Center for Projects Plovdiv (CPP) is an Erasmus+ accredited NGO based in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Founded in 2011, CPP has coordinated over 30  EU-funded projects across 30+ European partners, with a focus on youth work, cultural programming and professional development.