Six partners from Europe and eight from South Mediterranean Countries (Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq) gathered on
February 14-15, 2017 in Rome at UNIMED premises for the Kick-off meeting of the
RESCUE project (Refugees Education Support in MENA Countries), coordinated by UNIMED. RESCUE is an international cooperation project selected for co-funding under the Erasmus + Capacity Building in Higher Education programme during the period 15 October 2016 – 14 October 2019. During the two-day event, the participants discussed how to support the Partner Country Universities in structuring an effective response to the refugees problem, by creating ad hoc units (the Refugee Student Operational Support Unit – R-SOS), whose mission is to structure specific services supporting the refugee students in resuming their academic training path. Besides the KoM, UNIMED organized a
workshop on
Refugees in Europe and MENA Region, on 15th of February 2017 in Rome at UNIMED premises. Prof. Dr. Celal Nazım İrem, Chairholder of UNESCO Chair in Cultural Diplomacy, Governance and Education made a presentation during the workshop. The event provided an opportunity for the interested stakeholders to discuss about the refugees condition in European Higher Institutions as well as in the MENA region benefiting from different experiences and hearing voices from the field.
About RESCUE: The partner countries involved in this proposal, namely Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq (but also some of the Programme Countries involved, such as Turkey and Germany) are experiencing a very critical situation due to the high number of refugees present on their territory: most of these are Syrian citizens, and include a high percentage of former University students who had to interrupt their academic curriculum. The main specific objective of RESCUE is to help the Partner Country Universities in structuring an effective response to this problem, by creating ad hoc units (the Refugee Student Operational Support Unit – R-SOS), whose mission is to structure specific services supporting the refugee students in resuming their academic training path. The analysis carried out by the target Universities has shown that each one of them has different approaches and constraints vis-à-vis this problem, therefore ad hoc solutions must be implemented in each one of them. Once the R-SOS units will be operational, the services they will deliver will help the refugee students in resuming their academic training path, in some cases by accessing the standard curricula on the same basis as all the other students, in some other cases by following ad hoc training courses providing them with basic skills and competencies useful for employment purposes. Therefore it is expected that the setting up of the R-SOS units will help in improving the situation of the refugee student either by supporting them in getting a job in the hosting countries either in preparing them for returning to their origin country once the crisis is over.
Members of the Consortium - Sapienza University, Italy
- UB, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain
- TUB, Technische Universitaet Berlin, Germany
- IAU, Istanbul Aydin University, Turkey
- USEK, Holy Spirit University of Kaslik, Lebanon
- UB, Lebanese University, Lebanon
- UoD, University of Duhok, Iraq
- DPU, Duhok Polytechnic University, Iraq
- AArU, Association of Arab Universities, Jordan
- YU, Yarmouk University, Jordan
- ZUJ, Al-Zaytoonah University of Jordan, Jordan
- ZU, Zarqa University, Jordan
Associated Partners |
