Training Kit for Empowering Refugee-Led Community Organisations Erasmus Project

Project Title

Training Kit for Empowering Refugee-Led Community Organisations

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Reaching the policy level/dialogue with decision makers; Integration of refugees; Civic engagement / responsible citizenship

Project Summary

Ample research highlights the crucial role played by refugee-led community organisations (RCOs). They provide bridge support to newly-arrived refugees, facilitate swifter integration by offering basic information on procedures and daily life, provide language and cultural orientation training, support refugees wishing to contribute to host societies and, generally, assist in the normalisation process of making a host community become home. In situations of hesitation, or fear of loss of cultural identity, RCOs play a role of persuading community members on the benefits of integration, whilst emphasising the opportunities of maintaining one’s cultural identity. In addition to promoting engagement with the wider community, RCOs also see their role as uniting and strengthening the community, promoting the culture, faith and the language of the community, building confidence and creating an active, healthy community.

Many refugees are keen to establish different forms of organisations, with different missions. Yet their national contexts, specifically in relation to the challenges they face as refugees, as well at the EU context, often impede the active realisation of strong and effective organisations. Through the identification of community needs, strengths and trends, the project will seek to produce an educational package that will tackle these challenges and provide improved skills to overcome them.

In the partner countries, and at the EU level, the civil society environment relating to advocacy for the inclusion of refugees tends to be one that is led or characterised by organisations that are led by persons who are not refugees or of a refugee background. Whilst it is true to say that refugees are duly consulted and actively included in projects and advocacy initiatives, throughout most of the European Union, their visible presence is often not equal to that of the leading organisations. This inevitably leads to an imbalance of power and visibility wherein refugees run the risk of being perceived as passive beneficiaries of support, instead of active voices and stakeholders to be engaged with. Our project seeks to combat this unfair playing field, as it fuels a culture of exclusion and discrimination which disempowers refugees from being masters of their own futures.

The main aim of this project is therefore to see a dramatic improvement in the quality of enjoyment of human rights by refugees. This project is built on the premise, supported in literature and the Partner’s experiences, that this aim can be achieved more effectively if refugees are not merely consultation partners, token speakers or human stories but if they are elevated to the status of equal advocating partners through organised (formal or informal) community organisations. The emergence of the appreciation of the role of RCOs as key interlocutors between refugees and host communities is a welcome movement that needs to be supported if Europe is to move towards more inclusive, rights-respecting and dignified laws and policies – internally but also externally.

The project is based on the idea of supporting the active inclusion of marginalised, vulnerable or excluded communities. In fact, the project seeks to strengthen refugee inclusion by supporting the empowerment of those refugees who want to play an active role in their communities and at the EU level. Our ultimate deliverable – the Training Kit – will address the challenges faced by refugees in integrating effectively in their host countries. It will be a training programme geared at supporting the mobilisation of refugees into organised and effective communities that will be active in various spheres: peer-to-peer support such as provision of information or other community-based services; advocacy with national governmental stakeholders in order to bring the voice of excluded groups to the attention of policy-makers; engagement in public awareness-raising, talking directly from the heart of their represented communities. In doing so, the Training Kit will therefore have multiple impacts on the affected refugee communities.

The expertise of the project Partners – a combination of RCOs and other NGOs experts in their national contexts – will ensure the highest quality of implementation and deliverables.

The Training Kit will be composed of content addressing RCOs wishing to active at the national level and training content addressed RCOs wishing to be active at the European level. Thanks to the project’s combination of community-based consultation, desk-research and synergising transnational expertise, it will be based on an in-depth understanding of the needs and strengths of RCOs and refugee communities, seeking to fill those skill and knowledge gaps that hinder RCOs from being effective partners in advocacy at nationally, and at the European level.

The Training Kit will be made publicly available and thoroughly disseminated throughout the Partners’ networks

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 143419 Eur

Project Coordinator

ADITUS FOUNDATION & Country: MT

Project Partners

• Mosaico – Azioni per i rifugiati
• ELLINIKO FOROUM PROSFIGON
• VERENIGING VLUCHTELINGENWERK NEDERLAND
• JESUIT REFUGEE SERVICE MALTA FOUNDATION (JRS MALTA)
• EUROPEAN COUNCIL ON REFUGEES AND EXILES AISBL
• CY.R.C. CYPRUS REFUGEE COUNCIL