Five students from Veritas University, Abuja, have returned home after a semester studying in Poland under the Erasmus+ exchange programme, completing the university’s first participation in the initiative. The programme opens the door to future opportunities for students to learn across cultures while strengthening education at home in Nigeria.
For Sr Kathleen McGarvey OLA, who helped establish the exchange, the students’ return brought months of planning and partnership to fruition.
Kathleen has been based at Veritas since September 2024, after spending 10 years as Congregational Leader for OLA Irish Province. She now lectures across the Faculty of Theology, the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies, and the General Studies Programme, across subjects including missiology, interfaith dialogue and gender studies, in a country where religious and ethnic tensions, economic hardship and insecurity remain part of daily life. She also directs the university’s Directorate for Advancement and International Collaboration, building research and institutional partnerships with universities in Ireland, Europe, and the United States. The Erasmus+ exchange is one expression of those partnerships, and these five students are the first cohort to take part.
Clement Adinya, a Computer Science student, reflected on his experience in a blog written partway through the semester. He began with the cold: temperatures falling to two degrees below zero on some evenings, while other students in the group mentioned, almost in passing, that they had already endured minus twenty the month before. He wrote about dinner with the college’s Rector, where two kinds of coleslaw appeared on the same plate, one recognisably Polish, the other closer to something from home. By then, two months into the exchange, the twenty-one students had become, in his own words, “a tight-knit, global family”: five from Nigeria, alongside others from Namibia, Kosovo and Ukraine. Somewhere along the way, someone taught them a Polish dance, which they never quite managed to get right.
The students left Nigeria in March and returned in July, after a semester in Toruń. Sr Kathleen travelled ravelled to Abuja to receive the students on their return home to Nigeria. “It has honestly been a journey,” she reflected on the four months since March.
The mother of one of the students spoke about what she hoped the exchange would do for her daughter. “The whole idea of knowledge is application,” she said. “So I believe that if she goes back to school, she should be able to hold classes or conferences, knowledge-share sessions with her classmates and other people, telling them about what she learned, the experiences she had, and what they can apply that will improve what they are doing.“
One of the students described Poland as friendly, despite the language differences. “Although not everyone speaks English, I could cope,” she said. “When you leave the country and you see other places, you tend to appreciate what you have at home more.“
The five arrived home changed, by every account. “We have received our five students back safe, healthy, happy… changed in many ways,” Sr Kathleen said. “They have definitely had a very positive experience.“
As the students continue their studies at Veritas University, the prayer is that the knowledge, confidence and perspectives gained during these months abroad will be shared generously with others and bear fruit within the university community. This first Erasmus+ exchange has opened a door, with the hope that many more students will have the opportunity to walk through it in the years ahead.
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