For the first time, this international event will be held in Portugal. During three days, topics such as good practice and innovation, legal and technical issues, and the role of repositories in the development of education, social integration, economic growth, and technological progress will be discussed.

Ana Sofia Mota, Director of Universidade Portucalense’s General Library, expects this to “be an excellent opportunity for professionals of different countries to share their experiences, to discuss innovative projects and initiatives, and to share success cases and current procedures”.

The symposium will have several speakers from abroad – from the USA (Michael Witt, Purdue University; Edward Fox and William Ingram, Virginia Tech), from France (Joachim Schöpfel, Université de Lille), from Australia (Prashant Pandey, Flinders University), and from India (Ramesh C. Gaur, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts).

This symposium is organised by the UPT’s General Library, in close cooperation with NDLTD and the Portuguese Association of Librarians, Archivists and Documentalists, and is aimed at information and documentation professionals.

The project “Present” focuses on European Directive 2016/343, of March 9th 2016, on strengthening certain aspects of the presumption of innocence and the right to stand trial in criminal proceedings, and it involves six countries - Portugal, Bulgaria, Austria, Romania, Slovakia and Cyprus.

Its goals are to contribute to the implementation and enforcement of this directive, to collect and transfer comprehensive knowledge on the right to be present, to strengthen the mutual trust between Member-states, to promote the unification of judicial remedies, to increase the efficiency of legal resources, and to share best practices.

Under the coordination of the Law and Internet Foundation, this project has the support of the Justice Programme of the European Commission, with Grant Agreement number 760482.

Tito Baião, Susana Antunes and Fernando Pinheiro are the faces of this NGO focusing on Guinea-Bissau. In 2011, Na Rota dos Povos supported seven girls and eight boys from Catió, in the south of Guinea-Bissau, allowing them to come and study in Portugal. Four of them have already completed their degrees. One of those students is Braima Dabó, who is three courses short of completing the Bachelor’s degree in Management.

And since Na Rota dos Povos believes that “education is the only way” to have a future, it has already equipped 210 classrooms in 40 schools of that African country, with amenities, school material, toys, and books, reaching about 10.000 students. It has created and deployed five libraries and one moving library, it has set up IT rooms, in a total of 60 PCs, it has placed street name signs made by Portuguese students in 44 tabancas (villages), and it has screened children’s films, in the evenings, in tabancas.

In March 2018, the NGO created “A Casa da Mamé Ussai”, in Catió, to take in orphans whose mothers had died in labour (it currently houses 14 children). All the costs of the house are supported by private supporters’ fixed monthly donations. “The house has the basic conditions to function but there are pressing needs to be met, such as having access to electric power 24 hours a day, building and equipping a kitchen, and having an uninterrupted supply of running water”, says Susana Antunes.

The Musna Sambú Hospital, in the same town, is another project they support. Fernando Pinheiro, a doctor and a volunteer, tells us that aid has been in the form of “several medications for internal use, supporting medical equipment, a lot of supplies and equipment for the nursing wards”.

Today, Na Rota dos Povos has a relevant role in the lives of many Guineans, through its volunteer work. “We are 100% volunteer, we raise the money to cover our own costs with the activities we carry out. We do not have any subsidies nor any international or state funding. Our activities are fully supported with donations from individuals or institutions”, explained Tito Baião.

In this event, in a roadshow passing by six Brazilian cities (Rio de Janeiro, Brasília, Curitiba, São Paulo, Salvador, and Belo Horizonte), Universidade Portucalense presented its training portfolio.

Olívia de Carvalho, who followed this mission, guarantees that Portugal is one of the countries of choice for Brazilian students. “Safety, high quality teaching, a common language, and emotional and often family ties” contribute for such a choice.

The top two countries chosen when it comes to studying abroad are, first, the USA followed by Canada. Portugal appears in the third place, followed by Australia and Ireland.

According to the organizers of Salão do Estudante, in spite of the social and financial crisis in Brazil, young Brazilians still want to study abroad, and those who are interested in it are increasingly younger. At the same time, the number of women interested in post-graduate courses abroad rose by 9% when compared to the previous edition.

Last July and September, DECO, North Delegation, welcomed seven students, who successfully completed their curricular internships in the Legal and Economic Department and in the Financial Protection Office, where they had the opportunity to follow the different activities carried out by this Association.

At first, this experience “made me anxious and curious, since I did not know what to expect, how to address the professionals, what would be the dress code, or even whether I should study again something that I had already studied in the past”, admits Nuno Monteiro, Law student.

Any doubts were swiftly cleared away, and Nuno had the privilege, as he puts it himself, of getting to know the dynamics of all sectors of DECO. Together with his internship partner, he sat through legal appointments, which showed them the practical side of Law. He also had the opportunity of taking part in DECO’s radio show, in Rádio Festival, and shadow a jurist in one of the several protocols DECO has with some City Halls.

“By the end of these intense two weeks of internship” I was able to get to know DECO’s social dimension. Since it provides services for a low and residual fee, it is able to provide legal counselling to consumers, who are the weakest party in almost all legal agreements and who, without the Association’s help, would be hard-pressed to exercise their rights, whether because they would be unaware of them or because they lack the financial means to have an easy access to the courts. DECO is a Non-profit Association, with excellent professionals, who will do anything to mediate and remedy out of court any problem linked to consumption or over-indebtedness”, says Nuno Monteiro.

For Carolina Faria, this “was an opportunity to learn, put what I have learned to practice, and contact with the field of Consumer Law”. She highlights the excellent welcome extended to her from all the professionals in the Delegation, who “made it a point of making us feel at home in that space during that time”.

Rodrigo Freitas Oliveira says that the internship has made him a “more diligent consumer”, and that it has “awakened my legal curiosity to atypical situations”. “It was and added value for me to have this internship in the biggest and oldest consumer association in Portugal, since I was faced with countless unexpected situations, for which I would have no answer had I not completed this internship with the support of all of DECO’s team”.

“Despite the significant decrease in home credit rates, the tightening of credit decision indicators means that many Portuguese who had access to credit 10 years ago do not have it today. Currently, only those who have equity of approximately 15% of the value of the investment can buy their own housing”, says Hélder Pereira.

The study states that, in percentage terms, in 2018, the weight of house credit in the value of real estate transactions in Portugal was 40.8%, half of the weight recorded in 2004 (86%), but there has been a recent growth when compared to the 21.58% in 2013. The maximum peak for the maximum amount of credit granted was reached in 2007 at 19.63 billion euros, while the minimum granted was in 2012, at 1.93 billion euros.

In a time he describes as “volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous”, Carlos Oliveira identified some challenges for brands, such as: “anticipating the future and knowing their competition”; betting in “disruptive innovation”; “optimizing their value for money”; having “a clear positioning and several warning mechanisms for their customers, supporting them to advance in their conversion funnel”; investing in “personalization and relevance”; and “optimizing the brand experience”.

Even though everything is changing - environment, techniques and tools -, “the client is still at the centre of strategies and practices”. In this digital and human age, “personalization and humanization” are core. “A product without a brand, lacking communication, is like a person without personality - it is not recalled, it is not preferred, it does not exist. 85% of consumption decisions have an emotional origin at the subconscious level”, he stressed.

He made the case for an integrated management of communication - “to proactively accompany and manage the customer journey, to manage social media and online presence, to enter the communication spaces and communities where the customers are, and betting in story-telling, in unique experiences, and in gamification”.

He concluded with a warning: “Digital marketing strategies and practices must be in line with the global marketing strategy and the global strategy for the company. In order for a brand to win in the digital age, it needs to have a differentiated and relevant identity, to be flexible and agile, to create trust and to be socially responsible, to create intimacy and humanized relationships, to listen and be able to respond in real time, and to create memorable experiences”.

The analysis of the European cohesion policy, the way it works, and the values and attribution areas to be implemented by the member-states were highlighted, as well as the unbalance of development in Europe between the developed areas and the peripheral and interior ones.

João Faria stressed Portugal’s convergence with Europe between 1986 and 2000, shown in the increase in highway construction when compared to other EU members, and he explained the deceleration that followed with political and international factors.