AWARE MIGRANT INTEGRATION

Awareness Migrant integration project is a Mobility of Youth Workers project with 5 partners coming from 5 countries namely Malta, Slovenia, Turkey, Portugal & St Marten Dutch bringing together 48 participants. The project will be supporting the professional development of youth workers in the form of 3 planned activities.
Migration is part and parcel of our society bringing with it new cultures, new different people. Building barriers against integration is a myth. Our society is facing an aging population, if we believe in economic progress the need for additional workforce is required to have a sustainable society which can cater for social system needs. But this should not stop there, accepting migrants in our country is only the first step, integrating them in our society is the challenge that we are facing. Are NGO’s which are the grassroots in society active enough in their integration, do the youth workers understand their particular needs and different culture and mentality? Are they informed and trained to adapt their years of experience working with young people having the same culture as theirs, how about new young people from different back grounds and culture going to be integrated and involved? Identification and sharing of knowledge and experience of working with other cultures is required and this will be through the study visits. Understanding the flaws, the failures over the years and how to bring improvements over these experiences will be examined and debated to identify solutions for application back in our society.
During the planned training course, study visits, the participants will understand the policies adopted to incorporate migrants in society in all partner countries, identify the weakness and the good practices.
How to address the migrant’s involvement in society and how to handle it properly through planning activities for local use among the community. As a result of the project, activities created will be compiled in a recommended dossier which would be created and disseminated to other NGO’s working among migrants and other NGO’s who have not worked with migrants, to make them aware of the reality of having migrants among us and how we as grassroots NGO’s can lead by example of involving migrants in our activities to make them feel part of our society and distributed to the relevant authorities and policy makers.
Through the project we would also address the creation of activities to make migrants welcome, dealing with social inclusion of young people across the EU. Finally, as one of the objectives of the project is to create a platform which would support youth development, aims to reach the objective in the field of education and struggle against poverty and social exclusion.
The project has specific needs and objectives to the participating organisations and of the individual participants who will be taking part in the project in view to the fact that the participants are all youth workers who feel the need of understanding the project subject matter, getting more skills, analysing the situation and reinforcing the capacities and international scope of the participating organisations through the networking and sharing of ideas which will culminate in producing high-quality activities outcomes for participants to be used in their NGO activities.
The project has the main aim of assisting youth workers acquire new skills on migrant integration in society.
It would facilitate the further improved learning performance of the participants through the use of non-formal teaching materials were through the active participation of the participants it will be increasing their initiative, creativity and self-empowerment which will result in long term individual benefits to the participants and also to the organisations which they represent since these learning tools/mechanisms will be re deployed in their organisation work/operation, hence transfer of knowledge for both the participants and the organisations involved. The increased motivation from taking part in the project would be the end result and benefit also for the community since through intercultural mix of participants it will assist in broadening the mind-set of the participants understanding and working with others from different cultures, views, opinions and methodologies. The staff that would be participating in the project would also benefit from increased impact both individually and also for their organisations since through the project they would be improving their competences, linked to their professional profiles (teaching, training, youth work, etc.); obtain broader understanding of practices, policies and systems in non-formal education, training or youth across countries. It will also offer an opportunity to improve their quality of their work and activities in favour of students, trainees, apprentices, pupils, adult learners, young people and volunteers who are in their organisation.