Europe4refugees – follow the routes Erasmus Project

Project Title

Europe4refugees – follow the routes

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 adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Social dialogue; Integration of refugees; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning

Project Summary

The project “Europe4refugees – follow the routes” (Eu4R) is a Strategic Partnership/Key action 2 for networking and exchanging best practices for qualification trainers working with refugees in Europe.

Refugees cross the southern and eastern European borders, remain in their initial host country, or travel on towards central or northern Europe. The conditions of admission, legal situation, and efforts towards integration of refugees are, in most cases, different between the European countries. Also differing is the degree of support by state and municipal structures, or structures of civil society staffed by volunteers. Finally, there are different approaches for housing refugees, from transit zones to settling in cooperatively organised housing and learning project in rural areas, to accommodation in transitional facilities and flats in urban agglomerations. Refugees traveling through transit countries, with stopovers of varying lengths, thus find quite different conditions in European countries, and in some cases have to reorient themselves multiple times. General further education professionals support and realise the social, structural, and linguistic integration of these often quite heterogeneous refugee groups in projects and regular offers via courses, consulting, and temporary offers with various content. Always the goal is conveying a diversity of basic and professional competencies to adult refugees for their future opportunities, and to consult them accordingly, independently of their prospects of permanent residence.
The project “Europe4refugees – follow the routes” gathers co-workers of refugee work from five southern, central, northern and eastern European countries (Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, and Norway) over a duration of 27 months to exchange experiences on these models via training seminars for practicing professionals in their five countries.”
The idea is to follow the refugee routes and stopovers of refugees within Europe from the perspective of further education. The seven participating partner organisations (two each from Greece, Region Thessaloníki / Island of Lesbos, and from Germany, Dortmund and Hitzacker, one each from Italy, Region Apulia, from Hungary, Budapest, and from Norway, Oslo) are not-for-profit, profit and private institutions of further education, associations of civil society, cooperatives, small enterprises and NGOs, all working immediately or indirectly with refugees or their support structures, usually made up of volunteers. The partners are nearly equally active in urban agglomerations and in rural regions, which constitutes a further quality for the exchange of best practices.
In shared short-term learning activities in each of the five countries, the project participants will develop new perspectives in three-day workshops. These take place as a combination of seminar units with experts, work shadowing visits at NGOs and educational organisations, and dialogue events with those locally responsible for refugee work, coupled with subsequent transfer and evaluation units. In exchanging on their work in the participating European countries, they acquire intercultural sensitivity, knowledge on the situation of refugees in Europe across national boundaries, as well as consultancy and planning competence for their own work in further education. In comparing degrees of integration and approaches of inclusion in these example countries, the project participants get to know best practices, similar, and new approaches in working with refugees.
Through the adaptation of ideas for working in their own countries, a further advancement towards European standards in educational work and in social work with refugees will be initiated.”
At the same time a network within European adult education is formed by these learning activities. The regular exchange of participating practitioners on migration and refugee movements during the project duration and beyond (e.g. through network cultivation using quarterly newsletters or similar means) also allows for a more rapid response to demands of planning and education in working with refugees. Such a developing trans-national educational task force as a counterpart to multilateral working groups on the political level can inject valuable suggestions and information to the regional and local educational networks of the participating countries, and encourage suitable follow-up measures, like for example the development of a European handbook for refugee work.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 126798 Eur

Project Coordinator

Internationales Bildungs- und Begegnungswerk, ökumenischer Verein für Begegnung, Versöhnung znd Zusammenarbeit e.V. (IBB) & Country: DE

Project Partners

• ASSOCIAZIONE CULTURALE MULTIETNICA LA KASBAH ONLUS
• Ghetto Out – Casa Sankara
• borderline lesbos
• SZUBJEKTIV ERTEKEK ALAPITVANY
• EUROMASC AS
• Hitzacker/Dorf eG
• Dialogos – Consulting Center for Education and Career