Project Description

The Erasmus+ CLUVEX project (July 2023 – June 2026; https://www.atm.helsinki.fi/cluvex) continues steps for organization and carrying out the Virtual Exchanges (VE) or so-called the VE Weeks for students from the CLUVEX Partners’ Universities (Yerevan State University, Armenia;  Mechnikov’s Odessa National University, Ukraine; Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine; University of Copenhagen, Denmark; and BioArt Society, Finland; and the coordinator – University of Helsinki, Finland), other collaborating Universities in these countries, as well as other European, Neighbourhood East, and NIS countries.

The CLUVEX project successfully reported to EU after 18 months of work (covering period from July 2023 until December 2024) with providing information about outcomes/ achievements/ results (see summary). Since January 2025, the CLUVEX Partners actively participated in preparing and distribution/ promotion of the Call-for-Students and Call-for-Moderators for the 2nd VE Week, in organization and carrying out a short series of trainings for new moderators (three online meetings, which focused on topics of: 1st on 27 March – introduction to CLUVEX project, day-by-day programme, DigiCampus; 2nd on 15 April – introduction to Climate Horizon exercise, tools for climate data analysis; and 3rd on 30 April – orientation for VE Week, questions/ answers). The training for new hosts (1 online meeting on 28 April) was also organized. Finally, the 2nd VE Week for students took place online during 12-16 May 2025 (see summary/ details).

The Call for the CLUVEX 3rd Virtual Exchanges for Students (3rd VE Week for students, 8-10 October 2025) has been announced in mid-Jun 2025 (opened on 11th June & closed on 26th September – for students & opened on 13th June & closed on 1st September – for moderators), and information is actively distributed/ advertised among students of the CLUVEX project Partners/ Universities (from Armenia, Denmark, Finland, Ukraine) and other collaborating Universities. After the 2nd VE Week completed, the preparatory steps for the 3rd VE Week started. These included: (1) Announcements for the Call-for-Students and the Call-for-Moderators for new VE Week in Autumn 2025; (2) Arrangement of trainings for new moderators, which will take place online on 8, 15 and 22 September which will follow similar topics used for moderators in Spring 2025; (3) Arrangement of training for hosts, which will take place at the end of September; (4) Improving the Climate Horizon group exercise textbook as a guide for students and moderators; (5) Updating the day-by-day programme of the VE Week which includes now all 8 lectures divided between two days as plenary sessions and daily detailed introduction of the Climate Horizon exercise to participants. It should be noted that after registration of moderators in DigiCampus educational platform (hosted by University of Helsinki), all moderators are granted access for all materials (slides and video-recordings of delivered presentations/ lectures/ web-based tools for climate related data visualisation and analysis, and additional materials) from all trainings for reading, repetition, and self-education.

The CLUVEX project Mid-Term hybrid meeting took place on 22-23 May 2025, in Helsinki, Finland. Representatives from all the CLUVEX Partners/Teams, members of the Expert and Student Advisory Boards, Associated Members attended the meeting onsite/ online. In total, 26 persons attended the event, incl. 8 persons online. At this meeting (see more details) the discussions about the dates for the remaining CLUVEX VE Weeks took place and agreed dates are: 3rd – 6-10 Oct 2025, 4th – 23-27 Feb 2026, and 5th – 20-24 Apr 2026.

Moreover, the CLUVEX project overview and outcomes/ results of its activities were presented at the 2nd International Conference on “Climate Service – Science and Education” (16-18 April 2025, Odessa, Ukraine), 4th Atmosphere and Climate Competence Center Impact Week (22-25 April 2025, Helsinki, Finland), European Geosciences Union General Assembly (27 April -2 May 2025, Vienna, Austria), as well as at national events in Armenia and Ukraine. The work on peer-reviewed manuscripts is in progress. See also updated CLUVEX promotional materials such as proposal, stages in workflow for VEs, VE Weeks for students and earned bonuses for students, logo, leaflet, banner, poster, project general overview, etc. & see also publicly available reported deliverables in web-table “Deliverables” of the CLUVEX website.

Text by: Hanna K. Lappalainen, Alexander Mahura, UHEL-INAR