The BONDS proposal intends to design and develop specific training/education programme for immigrant mothers and children, focusing on the acquisition of key competences and soft skills for social inclusion and well-being through the methodology of Collaborative Comics Storytelling. More than a million migrants and refugees crossed into Europe in 2015, compared with just 280,000 the year before. The scale of the crisis continues, with more than 135,000 people arriving in the first two months of 2016.The EU’s external borders have increasingly been the scene of human tragedies to which the EU, together with its Member States, must take immediate action. Migration often involves the separation of families and changed roles within families. It can be a traumatic experience that affects children and mothers’ sense of well-being. Moreover, severe post-migration living difficulties such as delays in processing refugee applications, obstacles to employment, racial discrimination, and loneliness, can contribute to long term difficulties in emotional dimension and the social inclusion of these people in the host contexts.At the same time, migration needs to be better managed in all its aspects; through the European Agenda on Migration (2015), the EU aims at providing its Member States with tools to do so in the medium as well as long term.The Agenda states that European migration policy will succeed if underpinned by effective integration policies.This is why the programme will be aimed at the acquisition of soft skills and language/cultural/ICT/social and civic competences through the exploitation of the emotional dimension of training. These competences will also provide women and children opportunities for public voice (providing information on access to social services, on on access to communication and rights and responsibilities), which are fundamental for a real social inclusion in the host community.Comics will be used for two main reasons:- it is a narrative form that combines two other forms of expression, words and pictures. During the creation of a comic story you might work alone or you might have to work with others as a collaborative and co-creation oriented-team, building on diverse backgrounds, knowledge, experiences and skills (script writer and penciler, inker, letterer etc). Comics creation is nevertheless a co-creation process. Either you work alone, or you work inside a team you always interact with your audience and external environment. We use comics storytelling as a tool to foster collaboration, teamwork and creativity;- comics, according to many scholars and educators do not tell the stories of creatures with supernatural powers, but they also have this supernatural power to transfer knowledge. According to many researchers comics can strengthen “students’ understanding of literary devices such as point of view, themes, symbolism, allusions, morals, tone and mood, flashback, and foreshadowing” , as well as reading comprehension and understanding (Gavigan, 2010). Four main activities will be realized in order to achieve the project objectives:- the first activity is a preliminary survey for defining the main contextual factors that in the host community affect emotional/knowledge dimension of immigrant women and children and hinder their social inclusion; - the second activity is the planning of educational workshops and seminars for women and children as part of an educational programme for letting them acquire key competences for social inclusion and well-being. These key competences will mainly focus in three areas, namely a) soft skills for social inclusion and well-being; b) accessing critical information such as social services (including online services and media as a source of information and civil participation though ICT) and rights and responsibilities; improving family-school relationships (through making explicit information on the school system, its organization and structure that is often perceived as tacit knowledge for the locals); c) promoting the social inclusion of families through the provision of cultural-content courses in the language of the hosting country with translation facilities and multimodal means for both mothers and their children;- the third activity is the evaluation of the educational programme at European level so to define its effectiveness and impact;- the fourth activity provide the realization of a specific framework for organizations working with immigrants as well as policy makers, aimed at developing training models which address the needs of immigrants. The project action will be carried out at European level, in national contexts characterised by different migration flows and policies, because we need to identify sustainable solutions to prevent immigrants social exclusion and this requires more systematic cooperation across a range of actors and policies at EU and Member State level.
The current migration crisis has become a highly sensitive political issue and has prompted the need for an urgent EU and Member State level response. The challenges that migration numbers present are manifold, with the settlement distribution of individuals and families a priority, alongside the need to ensure their longer-term integration into society. The BONDS project aimed to design and develop a specific training/education programme for immigrant mothers and children, focusing on the acquisition of key competences for social inclusion and well-being through the methodology of Collaborative Comics Storytelling. Specifically, the programme aimed at the acquisition of soft skills and language/cultural/ICT/social and civic competences, with a focus on socio-emotional dimensions. Illustrative storytelling is an important instrument to explore stories about difficult, complex issues from a person’s own perspective and visually depict their past and present experiences. When it comes to telling refugees’ stories, this form of storytelling can make it easier for receiving communities to empathize with the experiences of an individual refugee presented as the central character in a comic. The educational model aimed at supporting mothers/caregivers and children to develop a mix of soft skills, as well as language/cultural/social and civic competences. The main methodology of Collaborative Comics Storytelling applies the following key concepts: • Comics is a narrative form that combines two other forms of expression: words and pictures. • Comics creation is a co-creation process. • Comics storytelling is a tool to foster collaboration, teamwork and creativity. All activities that were planned to achieve the project´s objectives have been realized: 1. IO1- BONDS survey framework and report. A survey framework was developed by the partners to define the main contextual factors that affect socio-emotional dimensions for immigrant women and children and hinder their social inclusion. Based on this survey questions were formulated, which subsequently were discussed with immigrant mothers and children (for the children a more creative format was used) in the countries were later workshops were to take place. Based on the results specific needs for key competences and soft skills were defined, which formed the basis for the Educational Model developed under IO2.. 2. After the Educational Model was completed (which included clear instructions for trainers/workshopleaders), and the Training of Trainers in The Netherlands took place, partners in Spain, Slovenia, Italy and Greece started implementing Collaborative Comics Storytelling workshops with target groups. The model supported migrant mothers and children in acquiring soft skills and language/cultural/social and civic competences 3 BONDS activities impact has been evaluated, using feedback from the target groups and other stakeholders. An impact evaluation report was drafted and translated in different EU country languages, and shared via the project website, partner organization´s websites and social media. The method itself was disseminated further via different multiplier events that all the partners organized in their own countries. 4. Recommendations. Based on all the experiences a recommendations document was drafted, in which clear advice to policymakers and other stakeholders on how to apply Collaborative Comic Storytelling as an (additional) approach that can be used to support integration and well-being of immigrant women and children.