Students of 11 higher education institutions from the Kingdom of Bhutan, Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines are visiting Varna University of Management in Dobrich.

Varna University of Management is a leading partner in a new project funded by the largest European program for education, training, youth and sport – Erasmus+, Key Action 2 (KA2) “Cooperation for innovation and exchange of good practices”. The project „Furthering International Relations Capacities and Intercultural Engagement to Nurture Campus Diversity and to Support Internationalisation at Home“ or FRIENDS combines the expertise of four universities from Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Turkey to encourage the process of internationalization at Higher education institutions from Erasmus+ Partner countries.

The main objective of the project is to develop the global competence of Partner countries universities’ students  through the integration of intercultural dimensions into universities’ formal and informal curriculum.

Untill this moment was realized development of Institutional Action Plans to streamline the initiatives of the Asian universities to promote internationalization at home as well as to enhance the capacity of international cooperation units and faculty to apply the principles of internationalization. Other key results are the introduction of the so-called “intercultural passport” in the curriculum to explore the multinational environment and focusing attention to the specifics of the cultural diversity of students, as well as the creation of social spaces to function as student-friendly multicultural hubs that welcome diversity and support the welfare of students with diverse cultural backgrounds. In Asian universities was realized a competition for Digital Storytelling Contest and almost 190 students joined in it. The competition was as part of the activities to introduce a “intercultural passport”. The winners are guests in VUM and will learn about Intercultural Awareness and Cultural Diversity, Innovation and Creativity, Intercultural Awareness and Cultural Diversity Student Project and so on. The specialized modules will be led by teachers from VUM (Bulgaria), Silesian University of Technology (Poland) and Istanbul Aydin University (Turkey).

The students will be in VUM until July 2nd. In addition to the planned modules for training, they will have the opportunity to enjoy the lively Bulgarian Black Sea coast and summer life.

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