Co-creating Inclusive Mobility Possibilities and EDI Awareness in PIONEER!

This article starts a series related to the EDI&Mobility Pilot in PIONEER, in which we will update the latest news considering the progression of our pilot in the upcoming months, as well as during year 2027.

stock photo. — Photo by Freepik / Magnific

Laurea University of Applied Sciences is part of the PIONEER alliance of ten European higher education institutions. The aim of the alliance is to promote the strategic development of future cities through education, research, development and innovation activities as well as ecosystem cooperation. (Laurea 2025.) Among other activities, PIONEER partners develop joint training offerings and learning contents as well as aim to increase staff and student mobility. Our pilot is part of PIONEER Work Package 3, about Transformative Leadership. WP3 examines and develops how Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) lead institutional change to support, inter alia, inclusivity and European collaboration. The goal of our WP3 EDI and Mobility pilot is to increase awareness regarding EDI topics in connection with mobility.

As education export increases and domestic student groups have become increasingly diverse, universities of applied sciences are required to strengthen international and diversity-related competences of their staff. The proportion of staff with international background in Finnish UAS’s remains low, while the students are significantly more diverse in term of, for example, ethnic and linguistic background. According to the Finland’s Ministry of Education and Culture, non-Finnish nationals account for only 2% of teaching and research staff in UAS’s (OKM 2022: 27).

Universities have long recognized that staff mobility supports ongoing improvement of teaching and learning quality. Mobility-related activities and experiences support both institutional development, but as part of individuals’ personal development programmes through integration of international mobility activities in the whole organization. (JAMK International Services 18.5.2026).

Inclusion and diversity are the horizontal priorities in the current Erasmus+ project and will be emphasized also in the next Erasmus+ project period. Erasmus+ programme supports the students with fewer opportunities with a grant. In this PIONEER pilot we seek to enable the development of international and diversity competences among the staff by linking a concise, course-based knowledge package to an international mobility period abroad, followed by a voluntary Mobility Ambassador role to spread the knowledge gained amongst the staff and for the students.

EDI & Mobility Pilot

The ideation for the pilot began late autumn of 2025, when we started to plan a pilot which would combine three different themes: mobility, EDI (equity, diversity, inclusion) and leadership. We aimed to create a pilot which would be self-sustaining without additional resources, independent of us or any other key persons, and embedded as a permanent part of existing mobility processes. We came up with a pilot that would be built around an Erasmus+ staff mobility in Europe and would strengthen its impact.

In this pilot we have both qualitative and quantitative objectives. The preliminary examples of this are also connected to PIONEER Alliance work package 2 goals, for example of increasing mobility numbers. We also want to increase the amount of mobilities with fewer opportunities grant which provides financial support for students who may face barriers to participate in international education. These barriers may include, for example, social or health obstacles, or disabilities. One of the main goals is to increase awareness of EDI topics. The leadership pilot aims to establish sustainable structures beyond PIONEER project time, that empower staff and students to communicate the value of mobility in inclusive and impactful ways. These structures foster a culture of shared learning, inclusive leadership, and EDI-aware communication.

The pilot consists of three different elements:

EDI&Mobility course before the mobility period
Voluntary Mobility Ambassador-program after the mobility period
EDI-network for all participating HEIs’ voluntary staff members

We presented the pilot idea for the rest of the PIONEER Alliance and established a working group with our international colleagues of Avans University of Applied Sciences from the Netherlands and IUAV di Venezia from Italy.

Team working on EDI course planning. Photo by Sini Aalto-Friman

Inclusion gathered colleagues on Laurea Leppävaara campus

We hosted the first live event from our PIONEER EDI and Mobility Pilot called “Co-creating Inclusive Mobility Possibilities and EDI Awareness in PIONEER” on Laurea Leppävaara campus in Espoo, 13-17 of April 2026. From here onwards we refer to the pilot with the shortened version “EDI Mobility Pilot”. There are three live events in total in this EDI&Mobility Pilot and the kickoff was at Laurea. The core pilot organizers and pilot participants met on March 31, 2026, first online for the first time. During the live event we hosted guests from PIONEER alliance with expertise in EDI (Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) topics, HR staff, international affairs, e-learning/designers to create an EDI course, leadership and EDI experts. These guests came from our PIONEER partners: Avans in Netherlands, IUAV in Italy, Tomas Bata University in Czechia and University of Gustave Eiffel in France.

In our first live event held in Laurea’s Leppävaara campus, our main objective was to design the contents of the course and then divided the responsibilities for creating the contents in the upcoming months. Our team consisted of nine guests live and some online, in addition to some other guests arriving during the week. All our team members all had some specific expertise in EDI-topics, and different staff groups were represented: HR, international affairs, e-learning and design as well as teaching experts. The main partners for the pilot, Avans University of Applied Sciences from the Netherlands and Università Iuav di Venezia from Italy were represented, as well as Gustav Eiffel University from France and Tomas Bata University in Czechia.

During the week, we achieved the main goals for the event. The primary objective of our upcoming course is to enable staff members to recognize and identify systemic EDI-related barriers utilizing the mobility period. These could otherwise stay undetected without the experience of international mobility. In addition, we aim to increase the historical and theoretical knowledge of EDI-aspects, as well as present the Erasmus+ progamme as a key tool for enabling the mobility periods for individuals who may face social, physical or other barriers or constraining factors.

Group photo. Photo by a Laurea staff member.

Feedback from guests

The feedback from the live event was positive. Almost all found the presentations great and the schedule to have the right number of activities. The majority saw that they were satisfied with the content of the whole week. All gave the highest points for the question “The event was well organized”. Again, almost all wrote that the event was useful to them professionally. The overall grade was again the highest for most. We see that the main factors which allowed us to receive this feedback were the careful planning of the live event done together with the participants. A key takeaway would be that these type of live events with moderate number of participants should preferably be planned together with the guests if possible.

The main development idea arising from our work week was that enough of actual working time needs to be included in the schedule. Even though participants enjoyed all the presentations and keynotes which contributed to our work, the actual development work and especially the discussions around it are highly time-consuming and need specific attention in the schedule planning.

At the end of the week, we agreed the next actions for the guests to be focusing on in their organizations in the following activities:

Discuss with my colleagues to identify the key figures who will lead the initiatives at my university
Lots of organization and planning
I will ask participants to join a EDI course content test session in November
Be an ambassador of EDI, talk about the insights I gained.
Invite colleagues and motivate them
Start contacting colleagues about building the training EDI+ staff mobility

Feedback from participants:

“I liked the different presentations from several disciplines, but it was a bit full programme.”
“Keep doing everything just like that. Congratulations on the organization of this week!”
“This was an excellently organized and facilitated week. The Danish say ”hygge,” the Dutch say ”gezelligheid:” what’s the equivalent term in Finnish?”
“Thanks so much for organizing this event, it was great.”
“I have had a lovely time in Finland; I loved how this was programmed and how punctual we were (sometimes). I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart :)”

Our Nepalese students and our core team member Tommy Vorst from Avans during an international event for students at Leppävaara campus. Photo by Sini Aalto-Friman

Next steps and impact

Next BIP (Blended Intensive Programme) live meeting of EDI&Mobility Pilot is at AVANS in Netherlands 16-20, November 2026. We welcome guests from PIONEER alliance with expertise in EDI/DEI topics, HR staff, international affairs, e-learning/designers to create an EDI course, leadership and EDI experts. If you are interested in joining, please contact Sini Aalto-Friman. The final BIP live meeting will be at IUAV in Italy, spring 2027.

Authors

Sini Aalto-Friman

Sini works as a Senior Specialist of International Affairs at Laurea, focusing on developing teacher and staff mobilities. In PIONEER she works as WP3 EDI&Mobility Pilot Leader and WP2 Delegate. Her background is in language teaching, and she is a vocational special education teacher. In European context she has completed the European Inclusion Academy.

Miika Mäki-Torkko

Miika works as a HR coordinator with main responsibilities consisting of Laurea’s recruitment processes and supervisor support as well as support for international staff, with a background in economics. He is a WP3 delegate in PIONEER.