The Unite!4Future competition encourages students to share their vision of the university of the future. International cooperation between universities is one of the principles of the competition and the Unite! university alliance.

This years’ winning team was made up of students from Aalto University and Wrocław Tech in Poland. The winning team consisted of Santeri Kokkonen, an Aalto student, and Karina Skowrońska, Eliza Spętana, Natalia Sienkiewicz, Tobiasz Pędzik and Wiktor Kępiński from Wroclaw Tech. Santeri Kokkonen is a second year bachelor student at the School of Electrical Engineering at Aalto. 

The students’ proposal was a Night-time Letter Writing charity event where volunteers write letters with requests for support for a scholarship fund. The funds will be used to benefit students with disabilities. The letters are symbolically written by hand. The event has already taken place six times and is well known at the University of Science and Technology in Wroclaw, and now the student team developed a new vision of the project aiming to implement it in the rest of the Unite! universities. 

"The best thing about the competition was the low threshold for participation and networking. It was made easy to participate. You didn't have to take any courses or be a student of a certain degree/discipline, you just set out to build a team and brainstorm. The process itself allows you to realise your dreams while getting to know students from all over Europe," describes Santeri Kokkonen.  

Karina Skowronska from Wroclaw Tech says that "the night letter-writing, like Unite!, shows that young people can come together and create something bigger”. 

As the students met only online when planning their proposal, they are now eagerly waiting to meet face-to-face in the Unite! Student Festival that takes place in Lissabon on 29 June – 2 July.