Grandma’s Story – Engaging migrant youth in their local communities Erasmus Project

Project Title

Grandma’s Story – Engaging migrant youth in their local communities

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: Inclusion – equity; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; Migrants’ issues

Project Summary

Since the end of the Second World War, migration flows have increased in all EU Member States, either through immigration or emigration. Today migrants from third countries account for around 4% of the total EU population. Europe is confronted with an ageing population and a shrinking workforce leading to labour and skills shortages that will challenge economic growth prospects. Increased migration is seen by many economists as a positive factor to growth. Consequently countries that make best use of their migrant population have the best prospects to develop. The current situation concerning migrants, refugees and asylum seekers fleeing conflict from the Middle East and North Africa is part of an ongoing narrative. This narrative will seemingly continue and managing migration flows will continue to be a challenge for all EU society. Youth work has a key role in forming a society in which citizens have equal rights and opportunities with a view to ensuring social cohesion, inclusion, multicultural coexistence and economic development of the EU.

The primary aim of Grandma’s Story was to develop a comprehensive high-quality training material for Youth workers, extending and developing competences for working with young migrants in intercultural environments. The objective was to engage and include young people of migrant or refugee background in their local community by developing skills in interpretation, heritage and media; in a setting of migration, tolerance and diversity. The secondary objective was to extend and develop youth workers’ competence for working in and with museums and galleries, heritage and community associations especially those within areas of larger ethnic minority populations; by developing an OER platform and other resources for the development of online exhibitions curated by young people and eLearning for youth workers which set the project in the digital era. Grandma’s Story brought together the experience of several organisations working with migrants and youth work from several parts of Europe.

Documenting Patterns of Migration and Integration as a resource for training in Youth work, the project began by recognising and recording the stories of the “Grandmothers” – the older generation of women whose stories are seldom collected or retold. The stories upon which the project is based are found all over Europe. Young women left their homes and migrated to another country or region. Through hard work they established themselves and to varying degrees integrated into their new homeland.

The project “Grandma’s Story – Engaging migrant youth in the local community” produced:

1) ‘Pop-Up Exhibition – Guidelines’: A methodology for creating simple pop-up exhibitions. It empowers young people to collect the stories of older migrant women for educational exhibits in pop-up exhibitions in youth centres, libraries, museums. https://grandmas-story.eu/publications
2) ‘Migration Heritage Trails – Guidelines’: A methodology for developing “Migration Heritage” trails in cities and towns for youth engagement in the community. https://grandmas-story.eu/publications
3) ‘Community empowerment and informal learning on migration issue – Guidelines’: This e-Publication Guide is on community empowerment and participatory process on projects that impact on migration issues. It is aimed as at Civil Society Organisations, Youth Workers, Youth Educators working in Museums, Associations, Social Co-operatives, Schools, Public and Third Sector Organisations working with migrants to implement participatory process within communities. https://grandmas-story.eu/publications
4) ‘Engaging migrant youth – Training Curriculum’: This publication consolidates the projects outcomes into a methodological description and practical ideas of implementing the material in training at various levels: national, regional and local. https://grandmas-story.eu/publications
5) Stories: A rich media collection of stories of migrant grandmothers, including text, videos, maps and photos. https://grandmas-story.eu/home-en
6) Trainer Modules: A series of structured training Modules, Guides, and Tutorial Videos to implement the methodology. https://grandmas-story.eu/trainer-modules
7) OER platform: The platform enables users to create, publish and share the stories using a story-builder tool. All other training material, elearning and publications are shared on the platform. https://grandmas-story.eu/

The aim was not specifically to look at why people left but to record the migrant women’s story of migration and integration. The stories told through the project include women coming from Kenya, India, Barbados, Bangladesh, Austria, Uganda, Ghana, Iran, Croatia, Hungary, Serbia, Turkey, Syria, Russia, and settling in the UK, Estonia, Italy, Croatia, Turkey and Sweden; all with their personal story to tell. The objective of the project was to develop this core information into a methodology that can be repeated in any EU country.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 278942 Eur

Project Coordinator

LEGACY WM & Country: UK

Project Partners

• ELDERBERRY AB
• Muzej Slavonije
• GRYD LTD
• Lozan Mubadilleri Vakfi
• ASSOCIAZIONE GLOCAL FACTORY
• EESTI RAHVA MUUSEUM
• Udruga za rad s mladima Breza