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The ESC-tension 2 Project - Accelerating ESC Adoption in the EEA, is an EU-funded project, that aims to promote the adoption of ESC by focusing on students. The European Commission has set out its vision for a European Education Area by 2025 and how it can be created. By that time, all students in Europe should be able to enjoy the benefits of the European Student Card Initiative.
Starting from that vision and realizing that a major factor of resistance to the adoption of the European Student Card (ESC) is the lack of awareness among students in Europe about the potential of the card and its benefits, there is a need to act on the end-users of ESC promoting a bottom-up approach to foster its adoption and use among students.

This is the background that led to the development of this project ‘ESC-tension 2’ which represents the development of the previous ESC-tension project, coordinated also by ENDISU Foundation. Thanks to that,  a multilingual platform has been set up to provide new operational tools for HEIs to facilitate the harmonization of university cards with ESC standards, and for Student Service Providers to make student services ESC-friendly. Therefore, whilst with the first project the challenge was directed towards the institutional and organizational aspects of universities and SSPs for the adoption of ESC, ESC-tension 2 project addresses operational challenges towards the awareness of the potential, benefits and functionality of ESC among students. ESC-tension 2 will develop a series of materials that plan to raise students' awareness of the potential of ESC, providing training packages and operational tools that guide and encourage students in their concrete use of ESC.

The duration of the project is of 30 months, from November 2023 to April 2026 and its partners are the following: the project coordinator Fondazione ENDISU (Italy), ISIC – the International Student Identity Card Association (Denmark), the Normandie University (France), Universidade de Aveiro (Portugal), ECCA - the European Campus Card Association (Ireland) and, ESN - the European Student Network (Belgium). The kickoff meeting of the project will be held in November in Brussels.