Network supporting refugees – Education, NGOs, Public Authorities Erasmus Project

Project Title

Network supporting refugees – Education, NGOs, Public Authorities

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 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Access for disadvantaged; Migrants’ issues

Project Summary

• Context/background of the project;
The project focused on the role of non-formal adult education in the new refugee situation. The partners are sharing different ways to work with refugees in order to help them to integrate into the society during the time they are arriving until the time they get decision about their status.
The overwhelming refugee problem is highly topical in Europe and challenges all the stakeholders in society to contribute. Many institutions have to find new ways to work and also find new partners and networks in the work with the refugees. The project wanted to explore new roles of the non-formal education in promoting participation of the refugees in society. The target group of the project were: refugees, teachers, planners, health workers, representatives of NGOs and public authorities.
• Objectives;
The partners presented their activities regarding the work for migrants and refugees.
Main objective was the exchange of experiences and examples of best practice between the partners.
Second main objective: Working on a brochure about innovative ways supporting immigrants and refugees.
Third objective: Report on the implementation of a best practice of any other partner in one’s own institution.

• Number and profile of participating organisations;
The mixture of different institutions – Volkshochschulen in Austria, Germany and Finland, cultural institute in Poland, Development Agency in Bulgaria, Diakonaal Platform in the Netherlands, city office Budapest in Hungary, Roma organisation in Romania – guarantees an interesting mixture and different approaches to the common objective of support for immigrants and refugees.
The geographical distribution allows a deeper insigth in the situation of refugees in Europa and the different attitudes towards immigrants depending on the respective country.
• Description of undertaken main activities;
We organized 5 project meetings in Vienna, Hannover, Sofia, Budapest and Helsinki following the distribution of tasks and the progress of the project work.
We agreed on the working plan and supported each other creating different templates for our tasks. The local cooperation with different stakeholders formed the basis for our dissemination work thus informing and distributing our products.
It was important for us to reach out to other institutions to get inspired by their activities, and to get a full picture about the activities undertaken to support the work for refugees.
• Results and impact attained;
Every partner worked on a report about the situation of refugees in his/her country. Following the rhythm of work, we presented these reports during our project meetings. We may say that we really got a serious overview on the situation of refugees in the partner countries: The commonalities and the differences from Bulgaria as the southernmost country to Finland in the North.
We produced a collection of best practices including examples from other organisations. So we came up with 23 examples. We began to disseminate this product almost a year ago to other relevant local and national and European stakeholders.
We expect a certain impact on the migration work inspiring different institutions to adapt the one or the other best practice example, learning from each other and tightening the relations to local and national stakeholders, NGOs etc.
As this is a European exchange project we were ambitious enough to import one of the best practices of the partners in one’s own institution. The result was a report on these implementation activities.
• If relevant, longer-term benefits.
As the political situation in the EU countries raises concerns and scepticism towards refugees we think it is important to encourage these institutions that work in favour of refugees. We wanted to present positive examples and inspire other institutions by our work.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 77000 Eur

Project Coordinator

DIE WIENER VOLKSHOCHSCHULEN GMBH & Country: AT

Project Partners

• Volkshochschule Hannover
• BALGARSKA AGENTSIYA ZA RAZVITIE
• Vereinigung Sozialdemokratischer JuristInnen im BSA
• Instytut Tolerancji
• Budapesti Müvelödési Központ
• Diaconaal Platform Zwolle
• HELSINGIN KAUPUNKI