The increasing wave of migrants in Europe is bringing also high qualified asylum seekers and refugees who have troubles in getting into higher education. Welcome-Welcome to Universities and Higher Education aims at favouring the exchange of good practices among the partner countries in order to improve and extend the offer of high quality learning opportunities so to make it easier for refugees and asylum seekers to access higher education.
Representatives of the five partner organizations met in Graz, Austria, from the 14th to the 15th of December 2016 to get to know each other and share experiences and good practices on how to favour the access to higher education for refugees and asylum seekers.
The uniT – Verein für Kultur an der Karl-Franzens-Universität in Graz (Austria), coordinator of the project, gave insights on the Austrian university system and the procedures for migrants, refugees and asylum seekers to enter in it.
One of the good practices presented has been MORE, an initiative of many Austrian universities to easier the access of asylum seekers and refugees. This service aims at providing a space for reflection to refugees where one can find out whether university studies are an option for the future. It offers orientation in academic and artistic study fields and language trainings.
The other good practice presented is the Silent University: a solidarity based knowledge exchange platform by refugees, asylum seekers and migrants. It aims to address and reactivate the knowledge of the participants and make the exchange process mutually beneficial. It has been established in different cities in many countries. In Graz, the silent university aims at finding new ways to deal with the problems of language and translation.
Furthermore, during the meeting, we had the opportunity to meet two Syrian refugees and listen to their testimonies in accessing to universities. It has been an enriching experience and gave us further inputs on which kind of support refugees and asylum seekers might need to get into higher education.
WELCOME is a 2 years project co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme, Key Action 2 Strategic partnership for adult education. The project aims to facilitate the sharing of good practice in this area; each of the five partners has something to offer here in times of both their own work, and their regional and national environment.
Along with CESIE, the partners of the project are: uniT – Verein für Kultur an der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz (Austria), coordinator; VIFIN – Videnscenter for Integration (Denmark); VNB – Verein Niedersächsischer Bildungsinitiativen e.V. (Germany); CARDET Centre for Advancement of Research and Development in Educational Technology Ltd (Cyprus).
We will meet again in April 2017 in Hannover (Germany) for the second project meeting in order to share other good practices and experiences.
For further information on WELCOME project, contact giulia.tarantino@cesie.org
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