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							ERASMUS: CELEBRATING THE HIGH FLYERS


London, 7 March 2012 – the Erasmus Student Network UK, supported by the
British Council, marks the 25th anniversary of the Erasmus programme with
balloon releases and celebrations around the UK.

If you are in London this Saturday (March 10) have a glance up at the sky at around
three o’clock in the afternoon and you should see a host of multicoloured balloons
flying by. Over the next two weeks, the Erasmus Student Network UK (ESN UK) will
be bringing students together from Southampton to Edinburgh to celebrate the 25th
Anniversary of Erasmus, the world’s most successful higher education student
exchange programme.


Since 1987, nearly three million students from across Europe have Erasmus to thank
for one of the most important and beneficial years of their lives. Over 200,000 UK
students have studied or worked abroad in another European city and Erasmus is
now a buzz word amongst students and employers for demonstrating that a student
has international experience, language skills and cultural awareness.


Simon Williams, Head of EU Programmes, British Council, comments, “We are very
pleased to support the ESN in these celebrations. We are working together to not
only celebrate this milestone of the programme but to raise awareness of Erasmus
and its many benefits. Erasmus helps develop skills that employers are demanding
and encourages a global perspective amongst its alumni. Our hope and ambition is
that we can help many more students from the UK to take part in the programme and
be our country’s high flyers!”


ESN sections from King’s College London and Imperial College will be hosting an
Erasmus Birthday Party at Prince’s Gardens, Imperial University complete with an
environmentally-friendly balloon release, barbecue, entertainment and a big birthday
cake. Exchange students from all over the world are expected to attend. There will be
further celebrations in Southampton, Cambridge, Sheffield, Edinburgh and Glasgow
where students from the UK and abroad will be celebrating the anniversary and
releasing more balloons. For more information and event details please go to
www.esnuk.org.
Background
 The Erasmus programme is the higher education action of the European
  Commission’s Lifelong Learning programme 2007-2013. It is the European
  Commission’s flagship mobility programme that enables students and staff in
  higher education to study or work in another European country. It involves student
  and staff mobility, the introduction and development of the European Credit
  Transfer System (ECTS) and transnational projects.

 Erasmus Student Network (ESN) is one of the biggest interdisciplinary student
  associations in Europe, founded in 1989 for supporting and developing student
  exchange. They are present in 318 Higher Education Institutions from 32
  countries, offering services to 150,000 students, mainly on a voluntary basis.

 The British Council, as the National Agency for Erasmus in the UK, has managed
  the programme since 2007. Its role is to administer and disburse funds to
  institutions and promote the programme within the UK.
 33 countries take part in the scheme - the 27 EU member states, Croatia, Iceland,
  Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey.

 In the past 25 years, the programme has seen a constant rise in both the number
  of students and in the quality and diversity of the proposed activities.

 The balloons and labels are 100% biodegradable. They are released from a net so
  that there are no strings attached to them. When the balloons reach a certain
  height they pop and fall to the ground.




For more information visit:

www.esnuk.org

www.britishcouncil.org/erasmus

http://ec.europa.eu/education/erasmus