2015-11-27
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On November 25-26, in Brasília, the Ministério da Educação – MEC [Ministry of Education and Culture], in partnership with the European Union-Brazil Sector Dialogues Support Project, an initiative coordinated by the Delegation of the European Union to Brazil (DELBRA) and by Ministério do Planejamento, Orçamento e Gestão – MPOG [Ministry of Planning, Budget and Management], held the 1st International Meeting of the Program ‘Language without Borders’: Internationalization and Multilingualism.
The project made enabled the participation of five European professors. They conducted panels on the Practices adopted by Europe and Brazil for the Internationalization Management of Higher Education and the Role Played by Linguistic Policies and Multilingualism in the Internationalization Process of Universities: Elspeth Jones – Metropolitan University of Leeds/England –, Carla Salvaterra – University of Bologna/Italy –, Richard Stenelo – University of Lund/Sweden –, Ingrid Saint-Georges – University of Luxembourg – and Giorgio Marinoni, from the International Association of Universities.
The objective of sharing good practices is to contribute to the expansion and strengthening of Brazil-EU relations concerning the internationalization of Higher Education and academic mobility.
At the official opening of the event, the Ambassador for the European Union to Brazil, João Cravinho, a supporter of knowledge exchange, spoke of the Erasmus Program, a successful program that provides interuniversity support to the mobility of university students and professors from member states and associated countries of the European Union. He also spoke of the more recently created Erasmus Program +. “The ‘Languages without Borders’ program is a necessity. You can count on the European Union as an enthusiastic partner”, said Ambassador João Cravinho.
The Minister of Education, Aloizio Mercadante, stressed the importance of the ‘Languages without Borders’ Program. It will enable Brazilian students and professors to apply for exchange programs in foreign universities. “It was through the ‘Science without Borders’ program that we were able to find out that excellent students, mainly from the low-income segments of society, were not proficient in foreign languages, a fact which hindered their entry into this program”, reminded Aloizio Mercadante when praising the progress achieved by the ‘Language without Borders’ Program since it was launched in 2012.
In this regard, the president of the ‘Language without Borders’ Program, Denise Abreu e Lima, highlighted how the program activities had evolved and reminded the audience that other foreign languages were added to the program, which used to offer only English. “To achieve the goal of internationalizing higher education, it is important to offer training in other languages and exposure to other cultures. Therefore, the program gradually added more foreign languages, such as French, Spanish, Italian, German and, particularly, Portuguese as a foreign language, as a means to disseminate our language and culture in the countries affiliated to the program”, she remarked.
The opening of the event was also attended by the Secretary for Higher Education of MEC, Jesualdo Pereira Farias; the ambassador of Canada to Brazil, Riccardo Savone; and the executive director of Languages Canada, Gonzalo Peralta.
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