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As part of its continued commitment to student development in the Balkans, ESU made a special trip to Kosovo in December to train students at two of the country's top universities. At the invitation of Dutch NGO SPARK, a member of ESU's Student Union Development Committee (SUDC) spent several days with students at both the University of Mitrovica and the University of Pristina training students on a number of the key higher education issues at European level. This included a special focus on the Bologna Process, academic mobility in general and the specifics of the 'Let's Go' campaign in particular. The training session was the first in a series that will continue right through 2009, with an emphasis on barriers to academic mobility, solutions to these problems and campaign techniques that can be used. There are a number of important structural issues that need to be addressed - students are represented through student parliaments, but these lack autonomy, as well as any kind of gender equality strategy, and do not cooperate with any of the private universities. Nevertheless, the future looks promising. 'Students in Kosovo are motivated to improve their situation, ' notes Jens Jungblut from the SUDC who was responsible for delivering the training, 'And although there are still issues to be worked on, they are on the right path. If they can maintain their level of dedication, they will be able to solve a lot of the problems facing students in Kosovo today.'
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