In response to the challenges and opportunities posed by globalisation, universities all over the world have recognised the need of prioritising their international dimension and defining their own strategic polices and mechanisms in order to face the current and future circumstances.

Being part of this panorama, the universities of the Caribbean Region increasingly recognise the direct link between boosting their international dimension and consequent socio-economic development. Cooperative university actions such as international scientific consortia, exchange programmes and joint academic degrees are some initiatives that can boost the role of universities as such actors by offering opportunities and delivering resources that meet the needs of their labour markets and societies. However Caribbean universities are often faced by a lack of specialised human resources in the administrative support for international activities, poor visibility at international spheres and insufficient intra-regional cooperation.

In order to change this reality, EUCANET aims at providing support for the modernisation of International Relations Offices (IROs) of the Caribbean universities.

January 2010.- The earthquake has brought desolating consequences for the Haitian Partners.

At the Université d'Etat d'Haiti many students, professor and administrative lost their lives and most buildings were totally destroyed.

And the situation at the Ecole Supérieure d'Infotronique d'Haïti was pretty much the same; students and professors lost their lifes, and the buildings are not longer practicable.

Both IROs at the two Haitian universities were totally destroyed, which implied that some project activities that were originally planned to be performed in Haiti or by Haitian partners had to be redesign.

After the earthquake, representants from Corpuca, from AUF 'Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie' and top level managers from the most important Haitian universities held a meeting coordinated by UNAPEC with the main purpose of define a set of actions that will allow the restoration of Haitian Higher Education.

During these meeting the Haitian Education Authorities presented a detailed list of the earthquake damages and this allowed to identified the most urgent needs and how to start working together.

After this meeting and with the results of several analysis carried out after the earthquake by some institutions such is AUF  the project consortium with the approval of the European Commission extended the project duration from 30 to 39 months, redrafted the pending activities and designed new set of activities focused on support the recovering of the Haitian Partners in first place, and to help further target groups such the Haitian Higher Education community as a whole.