Essay competition winners

We would like to thank all participants of the Ride for your Rights! essay competition. We are glad to announce that Andrei Lahunou and Arseni Chubich from the European Humanities University and Agata Patyk from the Technical University of Lodz were among the winners and received a grant from their universities to participate in our Luxembourg to Brussels tour. The jury was especially pleased with Andrei's essay and would like to share it with you.

Imagine, you’d be in power to implement a new higher education system in Europe. How would you design a person’s higher education path when your ultimate goal was to create a tolerant society based on European values?

Republic of Belarus. People say that higher education there is unimportant. Almost all students are strongly believes that every work placement can be easily bought. Some of them had chosen European Humanities University in Vilnius to implement their dreams, so and I choose. Therefore I know the value of the European education. I strongly believe that current European education system is really viable and it’s vital to improve it. How? I’m not sure about exact steps, but the key goal is to save Europe united. EU has passed a great way to become strong and revitalize its potential, and education, particularly bologna process, has played a crucial role. I’m proposing to increase quantity of exchange programs and to allow participation of students from non-European countries. I believe that students mobility increasing can attach them to another cultural environment and thus make them more tolerant and for example help the guy from Poland assume French or Spanish culture and values as his own. The path will starts from tiny participating in the regional student events, then the more student will participate, the less hi will be adhered to a certain group, community or nation. So, eventually he will be a citizen of Europe, but not particular country. One of such student events is “Ride for your right” movement. As my university helps me, citizen of Belarus, to assume Lithuanian and European lifestyle, so every European university should follows this way to make a tolerant Europe without any race or sexual discrimination. Let’s make European countries more connected!