EUPeace WP7 Societal-Dialogue General In-Person Meeting Successfully Held in Adana

Çukurova University hosted the EUPeace WP7 In-Person Meeting in Adana over two highly productive days, bringing together partners from across the alliance to advance community engagement and education-focused collaboration. The meeting gathered 17 participants from 9 Alliance universities on site, alongside 4 participants joining in a hybrid format, enabling rich and inclusive exchanges throughout the programme.

Progress on Soft Skills Courses and Joint Course Design

Across interactive sessions, design clinics, and strategic workshops, partners focused on WP7 milestones, priorities, and future collaboration pathways, with particular emphasis on soft skills courses, institutional alignment, societal dialogue initiatives, and cooperation with regions and cities. These discussions resulted in concrete progress on designing soft skills courses, including confirmation of a shared two-tier course architecture with specific thematic focus on problem solving, critical thinking, conflict resolution, mediation, intercultural awareness, and dealing with diversity, as well as with explicit Challenge-Based Learning components. Course outlines were jointly aligned to ensure that community engagement outcomes are clearly embedded and assessable.

Strengthening Societal Dialogue and Regional Cooperation

As a joint decision, the two-tier course structure aims to identify 18 soft skill courses (2 per institution) by March 2026, with an additional 6 courses offered by October 2027. Course implementation will proceed with an EUPeace certificate of completion, without ECTS or micro-credentials in this first phase, while partners will initiate course design and digital delivery preparations in early 2026.

In parallel, the WP7 team discussed ways to keep data on several societal dialogue projects that would make reporting more manageable and effective, and agreed to make progress on another KPI, i.e.,  Relations to Regions and Cities, through the development of at least two joint activities per year per institution with regional and municipal partners.

Reinforcing Coordination Through WP7 Subgroups

To support effective delivery of all these tasks and performances, the meeting concluded with the re-establishment of three WP7 subgroups, with revised mandates and a renewed distribution of tasks and responsibilities among partner institutions, ensuring clearer ownership and stronger coordination for the next phases.