We are happy to announce the beginning of EKO’s formal collaboration with the Department of Communication and Media Studies of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA) and the Department of Sociology of the University of the Aegean (UAegean), in the context of their common MSc program «Media and Refugee / Migration Flows»!

The scope of this collaboration is to help educate the next generation of communication professionals in refugee and forced migration issues and to make educational opportunities more accessible to refugees and other ethnic minorities in Greece. With combined forces, EKO, as an NGO, will focus on field implementation, capacity strengthening and responding to urgent basic needs, while NKUA and UAegean take the longer view with a focus on research and training.

With a concrete plan of action, the following forms of cooperation will be pursued:

1. Formal participation of EKO’s personnel, as guest speakers, in the University’s new postgraduate programme (MSc) in “Media and Refugee/Migration Flows”
2. Introduction of internship schemes for students of the MSc programme mentioned under (a).
3. Joint organization of public conferences and other events, in relation to media and refugees
4. Joint research studies in the fields of refugees and forced migration issues

EKO’s team is confident that the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding with NKUA and UAegean marks the beginning of a viable and fruitful collaboration with great impact in the direction of empowering refugees and other vulnerable ethnic groups and of strengthening social cohesion in Greek society.