HOME AWAY FROM HOME: best practices in the integration of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in European societies Erasmus Project

Project Title

HOME AWAY FROM HOME: best practices in the integration of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in European societies

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 youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Migrants’ issues; Inclusion – equity; Integration of refugees

Project Summary

Our strategic partnership project HOME AWAY FROM HOME specifically addressed the challenges related to the integration of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants into European communities and aimed at identifying, analyzing and promoting innovative and community-based approaches to integration of new citizens of Europe. Over the past few years, prior to the project implementation, sentiments within the EU towards migration have become increasingly negative. The challenge of how to facilitate the inclusion of a growing number of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees and enhance their participation in the new societies increasingly gained importance in many host countries. As a result, our project aimed to contribute to the shortage of research on not only innovative community integration approaches but also on comparative research across various European countries which focuses on the overall integration projects and experiences and includes feedback from the refugees, asylum seekers and migrants themselves. It was important for such a project to be conducted transnationally in order to include both long-standing recipient/host countries, transit countries and new host countries.
The overall objective of the project HOME AWAY FROM HOME: best practices in the integration of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in European societies was to contribute to the better integration of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in Europe through promoting innovative youth actions and empowering young volunteers and professionals.
The specific project objectives were as follows:
1. to document and disseminate best practices of innovative community integration approaches initiated by youth or in which youth play a major role;
2. to raise the capacities of young volunteers and professionals for supporting the integration of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants.
Our project team was composed of 4 civil society organisations and one university, all of us having different yet complementary competences and experience to invest in the project.
The project implemented the following activities:
1. Research – comparative research across various European countries focused on experiences involving youth and included feedback from the refugees, asylum seekers and migrants themselves.
2. Developing training modules for work on integration issues and training of youth – the main aim was the acquisition of knowledge, skills and competencies for community mobilization around integration issues.
3. Dissemination – dissemination activities combine elements of working at the grass-root level as well as a social networking approach. The main dissemination channel was our online platform, while the social media channels will further facilitate engagement and publicize the online web platform. Additionally, each partner organized a multiplier event in their country which promoted the project’s intellectual outputs.
The project’s activities had the following important methodological characteristics: they had both national and international dimension; they brought together research and practice in iterative ways; they fostered mutual learning among project partners in order to ensure complementarity of our expertise and maximize the impact of our work and finally, the project outputs took the form that will easily allow their re-application and transferability.
The project targeted around 2000 participants – staff and constituencies of participating organizations, youth, academics, practitioners, civil society organisations working with youth and on integration issues. The project also directly reached around 30 refugees, asylum seekers and migrants and involved them in our research.
The project achieved following results: strengthened capacities and competencies of 5 European organisations/institutions for work with youth on generating innovation in integration approaches as well as for transnational cooperation; collected 33 examples of innovative practice of integration of r/as/m at the community level; produced online platform to facilitate promotion and exchange of innovative methodologies, strategies and approaches to integration; developed and piloted training module for work with youth on integration issues and community building. 25 young people were brought together on blended mobility to identify, innovate and generate actions for integration of r/as/m.
A network of youth working on integration issues at the community level was established and 222 youth and other stakeholders of integration processes were directly informed about innovative integration approaches and training methodologies for work with youth at the community level.
In the long run, HAFH is envisaged to make a contribution to sustainable inclusion of r/as/m in communities around Europe and support the youth in becoming active, responsible and open-minded members of society.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 193344,97 Eur

Project Coordinator

UDRUGE CENTAR ZA MIR, NENASILJE I LJUDSKA PRAVA – OSIJEK & Country: HR

Project Partners

• Forum Ziviler Friedensdienst e.V.
• THE WORLD OF NGOS – INFORMATION UNDKOORDINATION FUR STIFTUNGEN, NICHT-REGIERUNGS- UND NON-PROFIT-ORGANISATIONEN IN OSTERREICH
• THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTMINSTER LBG
• Tumult vzw