On 13 and 14 July 2019 the projects GREET and Academic Refuge jointly organised the stakeholder conference "Higher Education Values in Practice - Integration of highly skilled refugees and at-risk academics in Europe" in Brussels.

Both EU-funded projects (GREET under Horizon 2020, Academic Refuge under Erasmus+) focus on higher education programmes for refugees at universities. The conference addressed the role of European higher education institutions and national agencies in supporting refugee students and academics.

GREET - Guiding Refugees via European Exchange and Training - strengthens European cooperation and information exchange for and about the integration of highly skilled refugees in the education system and labour market of the host countries. Over the last one and a half years, the project has provided an opportunity for representatives of higher education institutions and national agencies to exchange and discuss their experiences, questions and working methods with colleagues from the main European host countries through a Peer Learning Activity and three webinars. The DAAD and the Finnish National Agency for Education EDUFI are project partners in the consortium led by ACA (Academic Cooperation Association).

At the stakeholder conference, the results of these project activities were presented to a large expert and stakeholder community and served as a basis for the exchange of experiences between the nearly 150 participants from universities, national education agencies, EU Institutions and European associations.

This exchange was supported by inspiring introductory talks and parallel workshops.

The GREET project organised three workshops:

1. "Awareness raising for supporting higher education in emergencies"
   In this workshop, the IIE Scholar Rescue Fund and two universities from Finland and Norway made clear, in which countries scientists are threatened on a global scale and how universities can give support.
2. "Support for students with refugee background - Student engagement initiatives"
   The University of Giessen shared its experiences with the successful implementation of the BMBF-funded "Welcome Programme" and discussed the lessons learned with the workshop participants.
3. "Networks, associations and task forces as support structures and advocacy tools"
   In this session, the experiences of VLIR (Vlaamse Interuniversitaire Raad), the University of Strasbourg and ACA were used to debate to what extent university networks and national agencies can support programmes for refugees at universities.