ECSITE and the North African and Middle East Science Centers Network (NAMES) will launch the Euro-Mediterranean and Middle East (EMME) Summer School for Science Communication. This project responds to the growing number of science centers and science communication activities around the Mediterranean and especially in the Middle East. The Summer school will reinforce their capacities of development, but it aims also to strengthen dialogue and exchange among these institutions with the scope to build a growing community of actors in the region and to maximize their potential impact as agent of change for societies.
By unifying their efforts, science centers can play an important role in the establishment of a new and innovative Euro-Mediterranean vision. This means not only to act in their limited local areas (as shown by our common effort in the educational field and in cultural promotion), but also globally, because they are involved with science and technology, which have always been the result of supranational exchanges and cross-fertilization, and are nowadays the result of working methods and customs, which are exactly what make the old idea of national boundaries absolutely obsolete.
The EMME Summer School is addressed to middle profile staff of existing science centers/museums and to new comers from other organizations (universities, local authorities, associations, …) who want to establish new activities in the field of science communication or to develop new science centers. The objective of the training program is to train participants with management skills for science centers, scientific and cultural organizations giving them strong stock of competences and methodologies that they will be able to adapt after coming back to their countries in the consolidation and development of activities, depending on the size, type and scope of organizations.