Climate University for Virtual Exchanges (CLUVEX)

coordinators

3.      Suomen Biotaiteen Seura Ry (Finland)

2.      Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (Ukraine)

Climate University for Virtual Exchanges (CLUVEX) is a 3-year project carried out by two European and three Partners “Neighbourhood East” universities in thematic areas of “climate action, environment and nature protection”, “environment and climate change” and “green skills”. The project aim is to bridge students from European and the Neighbourhood East universities and to engage them with climate competencies e.g. ideas of adaptation and mitigation to climate change and the green agenda together with interdisciplinary/ green/ soft skills.

The project’s main activity is interactive online courses including traditional education materials in a way that students, professors and teaching assistants will work together in small groups. The Virtual Exchange (VE) will take place in small groups discussing specific topics of climate change. CLUVEX builds on atmospheric sciences research and an existing virtual online platform called “Climate University” developed and hosted by the University of Helsinki (coordinator). The Climate University has been already piloted since 2018 in 18 higher education institutions in Finland. VE activities will be integrated into Climate University higher education e-courses involving 2500 higher education participants.

CLUVEX will be implemented on a 50-50% basis so that half of the participants come from universities of Denmark and Finland e.g. European universities and the other half from the Neighbourhood East universities. All the partners bring their technical tools together with pedagogical expertise for designing new VE interactions between students. The project also uses its networks like Una Europa, an alliance of 9 European universities, the World Meteorological Organization’s Global Campus initiative, in Europe and Neighbourhood East to attract other participants on a diverse basis.

The major outcome is nurturing the generation of young Climate Messengers competent in building climate awareness and sustainability strategies in their home organisations and future work life. CLUVEX has a high momentum in the post-COVID-19 situation, where we do not know how soon face-to-face communication will be normalised and sustainability of traveling is questioned in a world aiming at carbon neutrality. Thus, the VE cooperation complements the ongoing physical mobility opportunities in the field of climate change research and the ensemble of political decisions and issues, where Neighbourhood East has an especially important role on a global scale and new Climate Messengers could be much-needed expertise in labour markets.