It is a fact that the Mediterranean has always been a place for exchanges, meetings, certainly clashes, but in any case an area where civilizations and different cultures have met over the centuries. Thousands of texts have been written on the Mediterranean and on its indispensable role and they have involved, in a multidisciplinary way, academics from Europe, the Arab world, and beyond. The consequences of this continuous and constant contact between the shores of this sea are clearly visible: in our idioms, in our cultures, in our traditions, in our daily life.
Yet even today, the need we feel to reiterate these concepts and to open with such words an article concerning a mobility project, it probably means that an opposite narrative aimed at creating fear and mistrust, hostility and suspicion subverted this fact.
The faces of the boys and girls of the Sardegna ForMed project tell a different story that we wanted to collect in a short video in to demonstrate what the word mobility means and how it represent an opportunity for growth for those who leave their own country, but also and above all for those welcoming these newcomers
In its first three years, from 2015 to 2018, Sardegna ForMed brought to the Sardinian territory a hundred university students from Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria who undertook a complete degree at the universities of Cagliari and Sassari.
The project is funded by the Fondazione di Sardegna and involves the universities Muhammad V (Morocco), Algiers 1 (Algeria), Tunis, Tunis El Manar, Sfax and Sousse (Tunisia).
UNIMED has coordinated the activities of the universities involved, playing an important role as a liaison but also in supporting the students.
This project has produced excellence in university courses, created solid collaboration programs that will last over time and increased the international profile of Sardinia on the university level and beyond.
The Sardegna ForMed project is part of the activities promoted by UNIMED in its almost thirty-year history in favor of an Erasmus program for the Mediterranean, a proposal recently re-launched through the Petition for a Mediterranean Erasmus Generation.
The faces and words of the Students of Sardegna ForMed show us that this is the right path.
