UNeECC Week : Making easier student mobility
By Cédric Pierre-Louis on Wednesday 20 January 2010, 00:48 - Education - Permalink
As a member of the UNeECC student board, I participated to the last UNeECC general assembly in Vilnius (Lithuania). During the student workshop, we had to do a brainstorming about Innovation, Creativity and Culture in order to conceive a project which can include all these elements. With Karl Fromberger, from the University of Essen in Germany, we developed a new concept of student exchange programme : the UNeECC week.
In few decades, European Union managed to build a political union between so different countries and people. However, when it comes to culture, citizenship, and identity, Europe seems to be still on progress, mainly for a majority of young people who are still looking for answering the question : what does it mean to be (a young) European?
Nowadays, student mobility tremendously contributes to intercultural understanding. While a lot of European programs like Erasmus or Leonardo succeeded in making progress the feeling of belonging to Europe, and promote the purpose of the European building, for many reasons, they unfortunately concern only a little part of students or youngsters in the EU.
That is where UNeECC Week (UW) can play a big role. From our point of view, we consider UW as a complement of the Erasmus program which finally requires a long preparation process and a significant financial investment, depend on strict eligibility criteria (for applicants) and offers few flexibility. Finally, an Erasmus trip last at least 3 months and you can only do it one time during your studies. So we imagine a new concept of one week exchange dedicated to European students. We wanted it to be decentralized, affordable and empowering. Our first objective is to allow European students (undergraduate or freshly graduate) to have several significant experiences within student associations across Europe.
So, students from universities members of the UNeECC network, would be able to spend a week or two contributing to student associations activities in the European university they will chose. It would be possible to do it as often as possible, as long as the guest student get his/her university agreement. Participants of this project would be able, during the stay, to learn more about national culture, youth activities, hosting university itself and student representative body. This knowledge could be implemented when they go back to their organizations. This initiative will also definitely encourage Good practices exchanges.
One week for contributing to student associations in other European countries, for participating to both local and intercultural projects, discovering new people, cultures and increase the networking movement which makes Europe a more friendly place, this is what UNeECC Week is about.