Empowering Regional Actors & Stakeholders for Migrant and Refugee Inclusion Erasmus Project

Project Title

Empowering Regional Actors & Stakeholders for Migrant and Refugee Inclusion

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Migrants’ issues; Integration of refugees; Regional dimension and cooperation

Project Summary

ERASMI will enable the diverse stakeholder groups in the field of migration and refugee inclusion work (amongst them e.g. community administration, public and private migrant support organisations, NGOs, VET, HEI, business organisations, volunteer groups etc.) to professionalise their staff and their organisations in order to effectuate their impact on social inclusion and will empower them to build strong multi-actor networks developing and implementing regional action plans for social inclusion of migrants and refugees.

Neither the topic of migration nor the debate about it is any new – but it has agitated Europe since the climax of the so-called refugee crisis in 2015 without any sign of easing in the discussion so far. The often-populist discourse lacks rational and conceals the view on the actual facts. In the current global context, our ability to effectively integrate refugees into new host communities remains a major challenge and political priority.

Building on the framework of EU-Policies and the European Agenda on Migration, the actual inclusion work is a regional social task, that cannot be a single player tournament for administration and politics. It needs to be challenged involving all relevant regional stakeholders and actors. In fact it is a regional, cross-sectional, multidimensional and multi-actor challenge – with an extraordinary high level of complexity.

Municipalities already understand this and react with strategic approaches towards social inclusion. But aspiration differs from reality in a dramatic way. Yet despite the willingness of communities, a recent study reveals that innovative participation concepts and multi-stakeholder-approaches are still the exception rather than the rule (Success factors of Integration on municipal level – Friedrich Ebert Stiftung 2017).

Based on our work in previous projects and our involvement in a large number of inclusion initiatives, we experience a strong demand for VET-training and learning opportunities for the staff members of inclusion actors and for organisational development.
Therefore, we will build on the critical success factors for inclusion of migrants and refugees (and the corresponding skills needed) by providing best practice approaches and by developing E- and Peer-Learning Opportunities for the relevant actors (and their staff) in the field of migrant support in order to effectively equip them with the skills needed to solve complex multi-actor challenges and by building strong multi-actor networks working on concrete regional action plans for social inclusion.

Specifically we will:
1-Provide actors with best practice (collaboration) blueprints in the field of multi-actor migrants and refugee inclusion (IO1)
2-Develop an innovative learning framework and toolkit (IO2) empowering actors to enhance the impact of their social work.
3-Enable and empower actors to improve collaborative planning and coordination of education activities in Interagency Networks with regional action plans for social inclusion (IO3)
4-To ensure wide and free access, the framework and the documented processes and lessons learned from the networks will be shared on our interactive knowledge exchange platform as OERs (IO4)

In doing so, the project addresses the following needs of our target groups and will create sustainable impact for them:
a) Actors / stakeholders in the field of migrant and refugee inclusion will gain a comprehensive understanding of the importance of collaboration and the tools and methods needed to establish regional networks and to develop and implement action plans for inclusion.
b) Social development policy makers and funders will identify high performing best practice strategies and find tangible ways to support their uptake at national or international level.
c) Project partners will acquire new strategies, tools and methods for improving the effectiveness of integration and social inclusion. They will improve their own competences in knowledge sharing and strategic relationship building and have a clear understanding of how to sustain and grow the project in the long term.
d) Refugees / migrants will indirectly profit from the regional cooperation, the uptake of professionalism as well as the synergies and released resources of actors – leading to a faster and deeper inclusion.

By implementing this approach in countries, that are strongly affected by inward migration (Germany, Ireland, Italy) and in Turkey, being the first reception and transit country for many refugees and migrants and by disseminating the ERASMI resources across Europe, the project makes a notable contribution to improve the inclusion of the most vulnerable in society. The project is important because we need to ensure communities are strengthened by migration and not undermined by marginalization or radicalization. We believe this can be achieved best, through empowering those who already understand this importance and by building strong networks.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 443795 Eur

Project Coordinator

HOCHSCHULE HARZ & Country: DE

Project Partners

• tvw GmbH
• T.C. TUZLA KAYMAKAMLIGI
• MOMENTUM MARKETING SERVICES LIMITED
• Frontiera Lavoro
• European E-learning Institute