The partner countries involved in this proposal, namely Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq (but also some of the Programme Countries involved, such as Turkey and Germany) are experiencing a very critical situation due to the high number of refugees present on their territory: most of these are Syrian citizens, and include a high percentage of former University students who had to interrupt their academic curriculum.

The main specific objective of RESCUE is to help the Partner Country Universities in structuring an effective response to this problem, by creating ad hoc units (the Refugee Student Operational Support Unit – R-SOS), whose mission is to structure specific services supporting the refugee students in resuming their academic training path. The analysis carried out by the target Universities has shown that each one of them has different approaches and constraints vis-à-vis this problem, therefore ad hoc solutions must be implemented in each one of them.

Once the R-SOS units will be operational, the services they will deliver will help the refugee students in resuming their academic training path, in some cases by accessing the standard curricula on the same basis as all the other students, in some other cases by following ad hoc training courses providing them with basic skills and competencies useful for employment purposes.

Therefore it is expected that the setting up of the R-SOS units will help in improving the situation of the refugee student either by supporting them in getting a job in the hosting countries either in preparing them for returning to their origin country once the crisis is over.

Outcomes:

The outcome of this project includes the creation and management of Refugee Student Operational Support Units (R-SOS units) in the university centers of Zarqa, Al-Zaytoonah and Yarmouk (Jordan), the Lebanese University and the USEK (Lebanon), and the University of Duhok and the Duhok Polytechnic University (Iraq).