For the first time in its history, our university has been appointed as the coordinator of a project selected in a competition organized by the European Commission.
The project under the European Commission’s ECO-ACT program, East African-European Virtual Exchange for Environmental Conservation and Climate Action, implemented in collaboration with five partner universities from Europe and Africa, aims to support ecological education, environmental protection, and actions to combat climate change.
The ECO-ACT consortium comprises the following partner institutions: Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw (Poland, coordinator), the University of National and World Economy (Bulgaria), Kibabii University (Kenya), Lira University (Uganda), the University of Rwanda (Rwanda), and the University of Bahr El Ghazal (South Sudan).
– This is the first central project in the university’s history under the international programs of the European Commission n which UKSW will serve as the consortium coordinator – said Rev. Professor Marek Stokłosa, PhD, Dsc, Associate Professor, Vice-Rector for Human Resources and Projects. – One of our university’s strategic goals is to develop international projects based on new calls announced by the European Commission. We are proud that our university is strengthening its potential in successfully obtaining international projects.
The project aims to enhance management, administration, and the academic partners’ educational capacity in modern, digital, and high-quality education, fostering integration, diversity, and sustainable development.
As part of ECO-ACT, UKSW and its partners will develop a modular Virtual Exchange (VE) program focused on environmental conservation and climate action. The program will include online courses consisting of then modules with short video lectures, webinars after each module, and international projects carried out by student teams under the guidance of mentors.
During the pilot phase, ten virtual exchanges will be conducted. The project’s outcomes will be presented at a Virtual Knowledge Sharing Workshop targeted at over 300 stakeholders and distributed to higher education authorities in the East African partner countries in the form of expert reports and recommendations.
The ECO-ACT project was one of the highest-rated applications in the competition funded by the European Commission. Participation in this project provides a unique opportunity to develop forward-thinking approaches to education in environmental protection and climate action while building bridges toward the internationalization of higher education institutions.