On 22 September this year, the first working meeting was held in Oslo to review the progress of the European Qualifications – Refugees and Recognition 4 (EQUAL) project, no. 101101707, funded by the European Commission, for members of the ENIC/NARIC National Recognition Centres network, in which Romania is a partner together with Lithuania, Poland, Italy, Greece and the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
During the meeting the partners presented and discussed the state of implementation of the project. On this occasion, a SWOT analysis was carried out to evaluate the activities carried out and the implementation of future actions. At the same time, the results of the questionnaire carried out together with the representatives of higher education institutions on the recognition of qualifications for refugees and the mapping of existing procedures were discussed. On the basis of this information the project partners will create training modules both for the staff of the NARIC Centres and for the representatives of higher education institutions.
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The overall objective of the project is to support NARICs to develop specific mechanisms for fair and transparent recognition of documented and undocumented qualifications obtained by refugees.
The EQUAL project builds on the experiences of previous projects – Toolkit, REACT and ARENA – to further ensure the implementation of Article VII of the Lisbon Recognition Convention. The project will support NARIC Centres in establishing sustainable recognition procedures that are in line with national admissions legislation and practice. Through local needs assessment, structured training and mentoring, the project will contribute to the capacity building of recognition authorities in the new countries recruited to the project – Poland, Lithuania and Romania.
The project page can be found at https://erasmuspluss.no/equal