Although Latin American society has gained greater access to education at all levels, government officials in education, schoolteachers, trainers and researchers are calling into question the ability of their higher education institutions (HEIs) to address education professionals' needs. Typically, such groups criticize the bureaucracy of HEI training programmes, their failure to address practice as well as theory and the lack of commitment to society. Regional meetings between education specialists have identified other weaknesses in these programmes, including the following: the poor development of trainees’ professional skills; inadequate training in civic values, competencies for the globalized world and ITC skills; and, in general, the failure to engage in curricular reform). To address the situation, the 2021 Education Goals adopted in 2008 by education ministers in Ibero‐America prioritized “strengthening the teaching profession”.The interuniversity TO-INN Programme adopts a systemic approach to ensuring quality in HEI programmes for trainee educators. It does this by prioritizing the development of programmes with socially and professionally relevant teaching content that encourage trainee educators to play an active role in their learning and make institutions more innovative in policymaking. the Programme comprises 22 institutions from a total of 12 countries (16 institutions from Latin America and six from the EU). The TO-INN Programme is organized along four axes: 1) Culture and tradition; 2) Citizenship and participation; 3) Social cohesion and 4) Digital culture. Taking Spanish as its common language, TO-INN aims to promote well-fundamented changes in university training programmes by creating a virtual platform for collaborative work and learning. This platform will be used to revise curricula structures and frameworks, develop teaching and learning strategies and create a network for HEIs to ensure relevance in curricula content.

The main objective of the PONCHO project is to encourage the process of internationalization of Latin American Universities partners in the project, with special focus on the Universities of peripheral areas of the region, whose geographical position or the volume of students have been unable to develop their internationalization in the same way as capital universities or major universities in the region. The PONCHO consortium is then composed mainly with universities having no experience in project of capacity building (former Alfa) and only 4 Latin American institutions have experience: Asuncion, Goias, San Simon and Nacional del Sur. Hence the exchange of good practices from the more experienced partners to the not so experienced partners is highly valued in order to increase, not only EU-Third country cooperation, but also Third country-Third country cooperation.To develop its objectives, PONCHO will work at three levels: at technical level: through the training of the IROs staff; at academic and students level: through the organization of Info days and Students Camp where academics and students will receive training and awareness session to approach them to internationalization, intercultural and integration using non-formal training tools; and finally at institutional level: through an online platform and the organisation of International Fair where the institution will be able to develop on one side their support process for a good internationalization and on the other side, through international marketing and network, to increase their international presence. The focus of active participation and collaborative decision making of the project will be implemented in the preparation, management, dissemination and optimization and quality control and through the PONCHO platform the consortium will not only be able to work together but also to develop new collaborations with other universities of the region.