The University of Wroclaw has signed up to collaborate with the Free Belarusian University Foundation on a project titled Creating online learning course content, conducting training and scientific-popularization activities for the Free Belarusian University project in 2024-2025. The project is supported by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education. It aims to build an educational platform offering European-level postgraduate online education for Belarusian youth who live in the country and Belarusians in exile. The Institute of International and Security Studies at UWr will lead the implementation of the project.

As part of the project, it is planned to cooperate with leading European academic centres and experts to learn about and pass on the experience of building a democratic system in countries that have undergone regime changes. As a result, FBU students will acquire theoretical knowledge and the practical skills necessary to implement changes successfully in the new Belarus.

The goal of FBU is to prepare reform cadres for the Belarusian state. The project’s creators rely on the experience of transforming the countries of the new members of the European Union and the potential of universities in Poland, the United States of America, France and Estonia while using modern educational technologies. The strategic task of the project is to create a modern educational digital platform, a place for integration and cooperation of online course providers, both academic centres and non-governmental organizations offering informal education. The long-term ambition is to create a Polish-Belarusian digital university based on this experience.

FBU uses modern online learning technologies, which allow it to reach its audience widely and offer them high-quality postgraduate education. FBU’s educational platform enables flexible and interactive teaching methods tailored to the needs of interested students.

The Free Belarusian University project has garnered widespread support from well-known representatives of Belarusian civil society, politicians and cultural figures, such as:

• Prof. Stanislav Shushkevich – the first Speaker of the Parliament of independent Belarus.
• Svetlana Aleksievich – winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize for Literature.
• Ales Bialiatski – winner of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize and political prisoner.
• Angelika Borys – president of the Union of Poles in Belarus, a former political prisoner.

The FBU’s chancellor is Dr. Alexander Milinkevich, advisor to Svyatlana Tikhanouskaya on implementing Belarus’ European choice and winner of the European Parliament Prize named after the Sakharov Award for Freedom of Thought in 2006.
The Institute of International and Security Studies’ cooperation with FBU envisages offering training courses that meet the educational needs of Belarusian students.
The project coordinator from the UWr side is Dr. Tatiana Ivanov.