“Does mobility contribute to community engagement?”

Why does university-community engagement matter? What is it for? And how could international mobility play a significant role in this?
The University is by nature committed to the community: a) by providing ways to improve quality of education: students from our institutions want to gain soft skills and adaptability together with thematic excellence; b) by aiming to mobilize and combine university knowledge and community experience to address social disadvantage and exclusion, to promote the idea of a fair society. Mobility plays an important role in providing these added values.
The first part of the seminar will illustrate these added values and how universities implement mobility, quality of education, contributing to global citizen’s employment. The second part of the presentation will demonstrate that inclusiveness is key for IRO activity.
As leading universities in Europe, Ghent University, the University of Porto and the University of Liège have invested a lot in creating an integrated policy plan for community engagement over the last years. The purpose of this session is to give insights in the creation of these plans from a policy point of view as well as from tangible examples. Besides, the European context will be reflected to the Brazilian context. Will the European approach be as effective in another regional context? What challenges will occur? How can we match the approach to come to mutual understanding?