The OpenMed project (www.openmedproject.eu), funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union, aimed at building capacities in Open Education [OE] in the South-Mediterranean, with a particular focus on higher education [HE] in Morocco, Palestine, Jordan and Egypt, which included the development of a series of skills, from Open-Licensing to policy making, curriculum design and adoption of Open Educational Practices [OEP].

A year after the course ended, and 6 months after project finished, an assessment was carried out to map impact at individual, institutional and HE regional level. The impact assessment used a methodology developed to assess the impact of online courses in open government and open data to build capacities for public servants, funded by the Inter American Development Bank and led by the Latin American Initiative for Open Data. This instrument was adopted and adapted by OpenMed to measure the project impact personal and professional level, Institutional level and at policy level.

The OpenMed project enabled Open Education by fostering good practices in use, creation, and adoption of OER, using a series of activities and strategies to support the project partners to define their priorities and to design their agendas according to their own needs, supported by strategic guidelines developed for and by the project stakeholders, such as the OER Regional Agenda for the South-Mediterranean Universities and the set of recommendations to institutional leaders and policy makers.

A key catalyser were the Five OER National Strategy Forums conducted in Egypt, Morocco , Jordan , Palestine , and Morocco, as these acted as arenas to foster strategic discussions to enable the pathway towards policy making. The outcomes of the project, such as the compendium of good practices, the capacity building course and its learning circles, alongside with the innovation Centres for Open Education are pioneer initiatives in the region, as these provide innovative methodologies for academic development and training and for content and curricular development.

The course participants were assessed in the level of confidence in five different domains of Open Education before and after the course and then, one year after the course completion. Also, the participants were asked about the impact at personal and professional level, to understand the changes in their academic practices and teaching and learning styles and career progression in the same criteria, to analyse whether if by putting learning into praxis, has made them open education practitioners and advocates.

The impact assessment also evaluated partners at Institutional level to see how institutions have adopted OEP, and monitor the adoption of the OpenMed Recommendations to University leaders and policymakers for opening up Higher Education in the South-Mediterranean to understand the project impact at policy level.

The presentation can be watched below:

This knowledge sharing experience, fully aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals framework, will be human and nature-centred and will reflect the shift from design-thinking to prosperity-thinking, by placing nature back at the centre of our lives.

The 24h Marathon will begin in China, where the sun first rises on Planet Earth and the first Country affected by Covid19. This relay of positivity and goodness, like an ideal Olympic torch, will travel from East to West, passing from indigenous people that reflect the identity of entire territories to entrepreneurs, start-ups, scientists, journalists, young leaders, policymakers, consultants, farmers. The torch will pass from China to Japan, India, Europe, Africa, Latin America, North America and even the North and South Poles, as we connect with scientists at the Concordia Station.

Be part of this 24h Marathon, connect with others, spread the word, add your voice to the common chorus, contribute to involve key speakers in your region, farmers, indigenous people, young entrepreneurs and decision-makers that can share local challenges and experiences for sustainability.

Together we can make a pivotal contribution to changing mindsets, values and behaviours for sustainability. The official hashtags of the 24h Marathon will be #goodaftercovid19 and #food4earth.

1. Sign up – fill the form
2. Engage and involve your Community and Networks
3. Follow the 24h Marathon, Broadcasted Live on Youtube, on Future Food Channel 

UNIMED invites all of you to take part in this unique marathon!

If you want to have a look at the Memorandum of Understanding UNIMED and FAO signed on June 2019, click here! The Memorandum recognises the importance of academic and research institutions in assisting governments to ensure specific policy reforms and aims to provide a framework for cooperation between FAO and UNIMED by joining technical and academic efforts on matters of mutual interest for both parties. You can consult this document to learn more on the opportunities offered in the framework of this agreement.

Dear friends,

Undoubtedly, we are all facing an unprecedented situation, brought about by the Coronavirus pandemic which hits the whole world. It is also a difficult period with potential risks, the consequences of which cannot be assessed today. This is why we are called to more patience, vigilance, anticipation and especially to a dose of optimism and common commitment to hope to minimize the negative impact of this pandemic on the future of our patiently constructed cooperation during several years. Faced with such a situation, individual solutions do not seem effective to us and our intimate conviction is that together we can face them to cushion the shock caused by this unexpected event.

Our concern, in these troubled times, is to support each other, to show our empathy for the families of the victims, to support ourselves to endure the restrictions imposed by the need to save human lives. This common solidarity and mutual support will allow us to bear the difficulties in progress, to minimize their costs and to keep hope in the advent of better days. It is more than ever a question of believing in the virtues of the social responsibility of our universities and their quest for shared values, freedom, democracy, justice and solidarity.

Dear members,

Our raison d’être is our cooperation and our shared focus on diversity. Firstly, it is a question of safeguarding our projects, the fruit of several years of effort and selflessness, of keeping our partnership intact, of working by all means to boost it in the future and to develop it through other joint projects, bringing good practice in all areas, particularly in scientific research and in the improvement of our teaching methods.

This crisis is perhaps the first sign of a real awareness to tackle the digital revolution in progress, so that tomorrow we are better equipped to provide as quickly as possible the adequate responses to any unexpected situations.

UNIMED is trying to adapt to this situation by developing the practice of smart working. On Monday, March 23, 2020, the members of the UNIMED Management met by videoconference to reflect on the policy to be followed to deal with it. An exceptional Board meeting by videoconference has been held on April 06, 2020.

Dear members,

When in an exceptional situation, exceptional attitudes need to be adopted. It is our motto today, that it is shared by all of us!

Hoping that this greyness will dissipate as soon as possible and with the least damage, we wish you all good luck. And see you soon.

Francisco Matte Bon, UNIMED President

Hmaid Ben Aziza, UNIMED Secretary General

Wail Benjelloun, UNIMED Honorary President

Marcello Scalisi, UNIMED Director

To help people deal with this unprecedented challenge and ensure that learning continues to connect individuals and institutions, the European Training Foundation (ETF) is launching a new initiative focusing on how education and training systems, businesses, schools, teachers, students and their families can adapt to the challenges of teaching and learning at a distance, often using unfamiliar and untried technology and imperfect systems and infrastructure.

To know how participate in this ETF initiative and to share personal stories on how you are coping in your country, in your town, in your school, your class, your family and even with yourself with this crise, you can visit the ETF webpage here: https://www.etf.europa.eu/en/projects/learningconnects-share-your-story-learning-lockdown

For further information, you can already read the first report on “Coping with Covid-19: Mapping education and training responses to the health crisis in ETF partner countries”.

Find out more at: openspace.etf.europa.eu

All the information and the program are available here.

Free registration here.

Among the programmed actions (Axis IV – Action 10), the AUF proposes an exceptional international call for projects with an accelerated and simplified submission, evaluation and selection process, designed to support the numerous initiatives linked to the pandemic that are emerging in the highly responsive, ingenious and responsible higher education space. This space particularly relies on creative and innovative collaborative networks of students, teachers and researchers.

You can find here the call in English to find out Objectives, Beneficiaries, Eligibility Criteria, Domains and all the useful information to apply.

Deadline for submission of forms on the platform: Sunday 3 May 2020 at 24:00 midnight (Paris time)

Based on a survey in which 22,000 international students and trainees in Europe provided information about their experiencies, the report aims to support policy-makers to make evidence-based decisions and alter communication in order to answer the major challenges students face during their exchange in foreign countries.

More information about the key findings of the report are available here.

Read the full report

The fast spreading of the Corona virus requires governments and International organisations to take measures to limit physical contacts among people to contain the disease and to call for a strong sense of solidarity and social responsibility by people worldwide.

To face this world challenge, international cooperation and dialogue are key to identify shared solution to defeat the virus but also to build together and ensure the sustainable development of our societies in the aftermath of the current crisis.

The Anna Lindh Foundation and UNIMED announce the decision to put together their efforts in the coming period to launch a Euro-Mediterranean Call: “#Covid-19: Euro-Mediterranean Dialogue and Cooperation must continue”. The Call aims to gather the voice of civil society organisations, universities, international organisations  and governments to assert the importance, invest and do more for the promotion of Euro-Mediterranean cooperation and intercultural dialogue to fight any cultural prejudice and closure it could produce in people’s mind.

In the spirit of dialogue, from now we invite all interested organisations to write to the email nostopeuromeddialogue@gmail.com to express their interest in joining this ALF/UNIMED effort. By end of April, we will be sharing a draft joint Call to be discussed, approved, disseminated and sent to all decision-makers in the Euro-med region on behalf of all the members of this initiative.

Download here the document and stay tuned!

The Global Education Coalition seeks to facilitate inclusive learning opportunities for children and youth during this period of sudden and unprecedented educational disruption.

UNIMED is pleased to contribute to the collective effort to find appropriate solutions in the current emergency context. As part of the COVID-19 response, UNIMED will support universities to bring together their expertise to build the missing links for education to continue remotely, and to ensure that responses today valorise local differences, and help to build more resilient societies and democratic access to education in the future.

In particular, UNIMED will launch a campaign among its members aimed to collect open online educational contents which can be made freely available to universities and students in multiple languages. Moreover, UNIMED will offer free technical assistance to Southern Mediterranean Universities in order to identify solutions and disseminate good practices shared by its member universities. 

Read here to find out more on UNESCO’s COVID-19 Education Response!

The European project “Mediwarn”, funded by the INTERREG V-A Italy Malta 2014-2020 Cross-border Cooperation Program, proposes a technologically advanced cutting edge system capable of providing high standards of care to patients admitted to hospital wards.

The sensors developed in the MEDIWARN project carry out constant monitoring of vital parameters (heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturation and temperature) and are able to predict any changes in the health of patients. They are essential and vital support tools for health professionals involved and dedicated to the management of the COVID19 emergency.

You can read more about these sensors and the project here.