The focus of the conference was the partner – participant relationship and the partner – FK Norway relationship. A main result of the conference was that the partners initiated their own Central American network to maintain the contact.

Common objectives and challenges
The representatives identified many of the same objectives and challenges during the conference. The most frequent objectives were friendship, cultural exchange, new working methods, improving the participant’s competence and institutional learning. They also discussed some of the challenges regarding how to use the participants when returning to their home institutions. Synnøve Seljeflot from FK Norway emphasized that results from an exchange program should be seen on different levels; individual, institutional and community level as well as short term and long term effects. Oscar Arce from Universidad Rafael Landivar shared some of his lessons learnt and stressed the importance of having a mutual plan for the exchange with concrete working tasks created and elaborated by the partners both in north and south. It is important to take into account the preconditions for making a good exchange.

A useful conference
It was the first time many of the representatives met and before ending the conference they agreed upon making their own Central American network. Some of the representatives from Nicaragua that still hadn’t started their exchange programs emphasized the importance of getting the opportunity to meet partners with experience. One of them expressed that “we need to meet again soon and we invite you to do the next conference in Nicaragua!”, thus showing that it was a necessary and worthwhile conference.