In spring 2024, with the financing of the European Union, the two-year Erasmus+ project EXIL (Sharing Experiences in Integrating Displaced Students) started. It is being conducted by a consortium of educational institutions, including Ukrainian Catholic University.
The goal of the project is to improve practices for integrating displaced students into new university environments. While achieving this goal, the organizers plan to study the experience of students: their actual needs and challenges and to consolidate efforts and share practices which partner universities have developed in response to the arrival of Ukrainian students who have left the country in connection with the full-scale war. As a result, the consortium of the project is developing guidelines regarding the improvement of pedagogical approaches and support services. This will encourage the development of a safe and inclusive environment at universities for displaced students.
The key task emphasized to the UCU team as part of this international project is the development of a research methodology to study the needs, expectations, and challenges of displaced students in foreign universities and analyze the data and prepare a multinational report on the results.
“Since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine, UCU has taken a pro-active position regarding help for internally displaced persons, providing them with multifaceted support. Participation in the EXIL project is an important continuation of similar initiatives with an international scope. We expect, in particular, that the project’s activities will encourage the improvement of conditions for the cultural and social integration of students of our university in new educational environments as part of the realization of mobility programs,” said Nataliya Lahotska, manager of the EXIL project on the Ukrainian side.
The Ukrainian Catholic University’s partners in the EXIL project are: Poznań University of Economics and Business, which is the coordinator; University College of Namur-Liège-Luxembourg; Kaunas University of Technology; Kozminski University; New Bulgarian University; Jean Moulin Lyon 3 University; and also the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD Global). This encompasses a large network of universities, which will encourage the spread of the results of the project and continuation of dialogue in the European space about the role of institutions of higher education during humanitarian crises.
