EITA 2025 for MixUp

On December 9 Norbert Ruepert of ROC Midden Nederland received the European Innovative Teaching Award 2025 for the project MixUp from Roxane Minsatu, vice-president of the European Commission on behalf of the whole partnership. 

The award ceremony took place in Brussels. The topic of this year’s EITA was “Citizenship Education - Participation in Democratic Life, Common Values and Civic Engagement (https://innovative-teaching-award.ec.europa.eu/award/2025-edition_en ).

MixUp is an online tool that encourages conversation between students from different countries that have opposite opinions and civic topics. There are five MixUp sessions each schoolyear on UN days such as UN Day on Human Rights.  More information on the tool and how to take part, can be found on www.letsmixup.com .

Lab internship exchange

After hard work, negotiations and contact visits, we have managed to organise a one-to-one exchange of students in the field of Clinical and Biomedical Laboratory. 

Julia Hoveling, from The Netherlands, is doing her 7-month internship in the HUN (Hospital Universitario de Navarra). First she spent some weeks in the Health VET School of Navarra (ESTNA) in order to adapt to the new situation and in order to improve her Spanish. Then, she moved on to the HUN in order to learn how a real lab works and put into practice the skills and competences she has already acquired in her school.

Nadia Bendoechea, from Navarra, is doing her 8-month internship in Nutrilab, a company specialised on food, feed and agro. Two other students from Navarra had to opportunity to work in this company from March to June 2025 and this collaboration has been prolongued with Nadia.

We wish them both the best for these next months, now they have had the time to settle, meet new people and get familiar with the new environment.

NAVE2 Network Meeting in Lappeenranta, Finland

On November 6–7, 2025, Saimaa Vocational College Sampo hosted the NAVE2 network meeting, bringing together partners from the Netherlands (ROC Midden Nederland), Spain (Government of Navarra), Italy (Consorzio Instituti Professionali), and Belgium (Stedelijk Onderwijs).

Special guests joined us from Wales (Gower College Swansea) and France (L'Académie de Bordeaux).

Our topic this year was Cooperation with the working life. The program featured discussions on quality in workplace collaboration, flexible study paths, and future mobility strategies within NAVE4.

On Friday, the program was divided into two tracks:

• International Coordinators focused on technical working sessions, including presentations on NAVE4 mobility plans, inclusion projects, and KA2 initiatives such as Befinetour and MixUp.

• Managers explored leadership and team culture, strategy processes, and visited Sampo's very own excellence center Pastry Saimaa and made a company visit to The Switch.

October 2025: MixUp session on Sustainability 

On October 28, 367 students from 10 different countries took part in the MixUp on Sustainability session. 

As always at 11 o’clock CET students went online to first give their opinions on five statements ranging from banning of plastics, car usage in cities to promoting of nuclear energy or the question whether personal impact makes a difference. The system matched them to a student from another country with different views on the statements. Then the chat could start. 

During the 45 minutes of this MixUP session over 15,000 messages were exchanged between students in conversations lasting 5 or 6 minutes typically. In this way they were able to have conversations with students from different countries during a MixUp session. Overall students were very satisfied as they rated the experience with a score of 3.9 out 5. This is in a large part due to the user-friendliness of the system and the fact that every match is a new surprise but also due to the preparation all students received with especially developed thematic lessons. 

Next session is on Day of Human Right on December 10. Interested? Take a look at: www.letsmixup.com.