Your ideas and experiences are crucial to help develop the new ECIU equality plan. This plan will be developed together with the ECIU community and therefore, you are warmly invited to share your reflections with Marius Martinez (ECIU President), Katrin Dircksen (ECIU Secretary-General) and Olga Wessels (ECIU Brussels Office) via equality@eciu.org.

To support the innovative culture in ECIU, diversity, inclusivity and equality is key. We need all ideas, backgrounds and ways of thinking to enable innovation, new insights, be agile and responsive within the consortium and ECIU University. Therefore, ECIU is developing an equality plan with specific attention to gender and diversity.

The ECIU Equality Plan will build upon the existing ECIU strategy of inclusion of learners (2021). It will also follow the European Education Area (EEA) priority to decouple educational attainment from social, economic and cultural status, and the inclusion of learners in a lifelong learning perspective, inviting continuous updating of skills and competencies. It will also be in accordance with the Gender Equality Plan criteria of Horizon Europe and the work of Smart-ER on gender equality and inclusivity. Also, ECIU inclusivity officers are networked amongst each other and ready to support the ECIU inclusivity plan and ensure the alignment with the plans of ECIU partner institutions.

You are warmly invited to reflect on hurdles you identify for women, persons with a different background, age or culture. Are all voices heard within ECIU? Where does ECIU can be more equal and inclusive? What could be possible actions to take to foster cultural change and strengthen diversity competencies? Also, we are curious to learn about what you identify as the ECIU community and what aspects we should cover in the plan.

The plan itself will be developed in the coming months, discussed in different groups within ECIU and also by the ECIU Board. Help us to develop a strong equality plan! We look forward to hearing from you.