Student engagement is one main priority carried out by UNIMED since its creation. To celebrate this new academic year, after the gathering of the student jury for the UNIMED Award at Venice International Film Festival, further important initiatives will take place in the next period.  

The second edition of our Mediterranean Student Summit (MSS), organized in collaboration with Erasmus Student Network will be hosted by the University Abdelmalek Essaadi of Tangier from the 20th to the 22nd of September. This Summit will gather many students coming from the Mediterranean Region and Africa  and aims at increasing mutual understanding and creating the conditions for the selected students to become spokespersons of the Mediterranean region, by making them reflect, exchange and elaborate potential proposals addressed to the stakeholders working in the academic cooperation in the Euro-Mediterranean region. 

After several thoughts about the devastating earthquake of the last week that has strongly affected Morocco, and thanks to the willingness of the University Abdelmalek Essaadi to confirm the Student Summit, students will have the opportunity to discuss with even more engagement about how the climate change effects need to be addressed. We are extremely grateful to the University Abdelmalek Essaadi for hosting the Summit. 

Students are, in fact, also at the heart of a research project coordinated by UNIMED and the University of Urbino “Carlo Bo”, the ASMeC project (Students’ attitudes in a changing Mediterranean), funded by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. A survey aiming at investigating the knowledge, perception, attitudes and actions of Mediterranean students with regard to climate change and the consequent migration flows has been shared widely among UNIMED universities and partners and has collected almost 2000 answers. This impressive number reflects youth concern over the climate change issue, which has also demonstrated very recently its devastating effects. The results and the analysis of this survey will be presented firstly during the Mediterranean Student Summit and then during an online open conference to be held on the 28th of September. More information about this event is available here. 

Finally, and connecting the MSS and ASMeC topics, UNIMED is also one of the top international partners, along with the UNDP Rome Center, the OECD Training Centre on Public Governance, Youth4Climate and the CMCC Foundation, involved in the implementation of the Youth Policy Lab for Climate Action, an initiative organised by ISPI and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, which will lead to an event taking place on November 1st during the ISPI Med Dialogues.