Refugees Welcome Map

Many organisations across Europe and beyond responded to refugees by providing them shelter, advice and support in dealing with authorities, and engaging them in cultural and sport offers. As of 2015, many higher education institutions had developed initiatives tailored to refugee students, researchers and university staff supporting integration and access to higher education.

With the Refugees Welcome Map project, EUA aimed to showcase and document the commitment of higher education institutions and organisations in supporting refugees, as well as to foster peer-learning collaboration between institutions. EUA was collecting data on their initiatives and activities via a brief survey and presenting them in an interactive map, which was continuously updated until the end of the project. The project began in Europe but was open to institutions and organisations linked to tertiary education around the world.

By June 2018, the EUA Refugees Welcome Map had collected almost 350 initiatives from higher education institutions and related organisations in 32 countries. EUA made use of the data in a range of follow-up projects: the inHERE project identified common challenges and derived transferable good practice approaches to the long-term, sustainable integration of refugees into higher education, and disseminated them in a range of materials and training events for university staff. The TandEM project focused on the initiatives in Southern European countries and analysed specific barriers to higher education access that potential refugee students and researchers are facing.

Survey:

We offered institutions the possibility to put their activities on the map by participating in a brief survey, which took about 10 to 15 minutes to complete.

Why did institutions contribute to the map?

• It made initiatives for refugees more visible to other universities and organisations, and also to society at large and policy makers. 
• It encouraged other higher education institutions and organisations to follow their example and allow exchange of good practice. 
• It allowed to receive information about other initiatives, projects and funding opportunities related to the issue.
• It helped connect to other initiatives and facilitate partnerships, as it allows them to indicate if they were principally interested in direct exchange and cooperation with individual institutions and organisations (optional).