Presentation of the project FREE UNED

On Tuesday, February 19, Casa Árabe hosted the presentation of the FREE Project at its headquarters in Madrid. The project’s goal is to promote gender equality in the Mediterranean region through cooperation with seven Syrian, Lebanese and Jordanian universities.

The project known as FREE (Female Academic Role Model Empowerment, Equality and Sustainability at Universities in the Mediterranean Region: towards 2030 Agenda) is an initiative by the UNED university which forms part of the ERASMUS+ program financed by the European Union. The project is aimed at achieving Sustainable Development Goal Number 5, Gender Equality, through the creation of centers, observatories and methodologies for gender equality and the empowerment of women in the Mediterranean region.

The project has ten universities as partners: three in Europe, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University of Lithuania, Universidad de Alicante and Carl van Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Germany; two in Syria, the Arab lnternational University and Damascus University; three in Lebanon, the Lebanese University, the Modern University for Business and Science and the American University of Beirut, and two Jordanian universities, the University of Petra and the Princess Sumaya University of Technology.

The project was presented by Ricardo Mairal Usón, Rector of the UNED, Ester Souto Galván, Vice-Rector of Institutional Policy and International Relations at the UNED; Eva Sánchez Martínez, the Director General for the Maghreb, Mediterranean and Near East of the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the European Union and Cooperation, and Pedro Martínez-Avial, the General Director of Casa Árabe. It included the participation of representatives from the partner universities in the project.