ABOUT ERASMUS MUNDUS:
The Erasmus Mundus programme’s overall aim is to promote European higher education, to help improve and enhance the career prospects of students and to promote intercultural understanding through cooperation with third countries, in accordance with EU external policy objectives in order to contribute to the sustainable development of third countries in the field of higher education.
The Action 2 of the programme aims at fostering structured cooperation between European and third-country higher education institutions through the promotion of mobility at all levels of study for students (undergraduates and masters), doctoral and post-doctoral candidates, researchers, academic and administrative staff (not all regions and lots may include all types of mobility flow).
The specific objectives of Erasmus Mundus Action 2 - Strand 1 are thus to contribute towards the development of human resources and the international co-operation capacity of higher education institutions in third-countries through increased mobility streams between the EU and third-countries in accordance with the principles of equal opportunities and non-discrimination.
ABOUT SUNBEAM:
SUNBEAM is an Erasmus Mundus Action 2 – Strand 1 project with the aim to interlink European and Western Balkans universities; it fits into the European policies on higher education by sharing the main objectives of such policies, like promotion of European higher education, improvement and enhancement of the career prospects of students, promotion of the intercultural understanding through cooperation with third-countries and sustainable development of third-countries in the field of higher education.
The project offers fully funded scholarships:
For students, researchers, academic and administrative staff from the Western Balkans to visit one of the EU partner universities.
For students, researchers, academic and administrative staff from the EU partner universities to visit one of the partner universities in the Western Balkans.
From the geopolitical point of view SUNBEAM is functional to the supra-national strategic objectives of the region. The project has been developed in respect of the important, strategic events occurring in the Adriatic-Ionian area, mainly the creation of the Adriatic-Ionian Macro-region, whose strategy was formally adopted by the European Commission in June 2014 and endorsed by the European Council in October 2014.
The Adriatic-Ionian Macro-region, the third macro-regional area within the EU, after the Baltic and the Danube Macro-regions, is not a geographical region with predefined boundaries; it is a functional area, composed of national, regional, and local bodies coming together to tackle a number of shared issues and it involves territories of EU member states (Italy, Slovenia, Greece and Croatia) and also potential candidate countries as Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia.
The SUNBEAM partnership includes Higher Education Institutions belonging to all the above countries, with an additional institution from Kosovo*.
For years the partners have been working together on shared topics.
The long- term target of the project is to establish a platform for sharing educational paths in order to implement joint programmes for the awarding of joint titles among the universities in the countries of the area.
In addition to that, the mobility of researchers will enable the exchange of expertise and the identification of research areas of common interest, which the scientific resources of the area should be invested in, with the purpose of creating an adequate scientific background for the Adriatic-Ionian Macro-region.
*(This designation is without prejudice to positions on status and is in line with UNSCR 1244 and the ICJ opinion on the Kosovo Declaration of Independence).
