Context/background of project:By end of 2014, 59.5 million individuals were forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, generalized violence, or human rights violations. In 2015 more than 1,000,000 people arrived in Europe by sea and land. In the same year more than 3,000 migrants and refugees died at sea whilst trying to reach Europe. The numbers of people rescued at sea have been increasing dramatically on a daily basis, with around 6,771 people rescued within two days in May 2015. During the first two months of 2016 more than 100,000 migrants arrived in Europe. This proposal focuses on developing a knowledge hub (KHub) for nurses and other health professionals and volunteers who are dealing with or will be dealing with migrants and refugees from the current massive waves of displaced people which are reaching Europe and who are experiencing massive traumas and tragedies in their endeavours to flee to a safe and 'better' place for themselves and their families. This project aims to develop a knowledge hub (khub) for health workers and volunteers who are dealing with or will be dealing with migrants and refugees from the current massive waves of displaced people which are reaching Europe and who are experiencing massive traumas and tragedies in their endeavours to flee to a safe and 'better' place for themselves and their families. Objectives of your project::This KHub aims to:a) develop the health workers’ competencies in providing emotional/psychological support in culturally competent and compassionate ways, to individuals who are part of the new waves of migration primarily from Syria, Irag and Afganistan who arrive in Greece through Turkey. b) helpi health workers and volunteers to develop personal/peer strategies to cope with the high levels of their own personal traumas as a result of what they encounter whilst doing their job. c) develop resources on open access for health workers, undergraduate and post graduate students who can use for research projects, and other learning related to the emotional/psychological needs of migrants, refugees, health workers in the front line of service provision. d) create a network, a place where members of various communities can come together to discuss, comment, brainstorm, share views and good practices, share experiences, innovate, create, connect and collaborate.Number and profile of participants:It is difficult to estimate the number of participants since the outputs of this project will be open access on line resources and learning. But we estimate that during the lifetime of the project the numbers of migrant visits to the KHub will be between 500 -5000, the health workers and volunteer visits will be 200-1000. Description of activities: The creation of an exciting user friendly KHub platform. The production of materials presenting the Facts, Figures, Policies & Legislation and syntheses of literature, media reports & commentaries related to the current waves of migrants into Europe. The production of personal and reconstructive narratives about health workers, volunteers and migrant lived in experiences. The identification of psychological support tools and best practices. The creation of interactive tools to aid the acquisition of skills in providing emotional support. The delivery of workshops, webinars, social media discussions etc with the participation of migrants, health workers and crowd sourced experts. The provision of KHub space and tools for networking and blogging. The provision of training on how to navigate and make the most of the KHub. Six National valorisation seminars.Methodology to be used in carrying out the project::The methodology will be based on the principles of co-creation and co-learning. The outputs will be created through a combination of bottom up and top down approaches. Short description of the results and impact envisaged:The results will be numerous tools prepared by the target groups and members of the project team and presented in user friendly easily accessible ways which will help the target groups to provide emotional support to peers and to themselves. Since massive migration will continue and because the KHub tools, other resources and networking facilities will be accessible through mobile devices we envisage the impact to be large and long lasting.The potential longer term benefits: In the long term we anticipate that the KHub will be the authoritative one-stop place for learning how to give and receive emotional support. The benefits for this can be huge.
Context/background of the project: Between 2015- 2017 over 2 million refugees, most of them from Syria, Irag and Afganistan arrived in Europe. The receiving countries require human and other resources in order to respond to the psychological trauma of refugees.This project focused on alleviating this type of trauma upon arrival in the receiving country through the provision of psychological support. The carers' emotional needs are also addressed in this project through the provision of learning units and videos on self care and mindfulness. The Project Objectives: - To develop the health workers’ competencies in providing emotional/psychological support in culturally competent and compassionate ways, to individuals who are part of the new waves of migration primarily from Syria, Iraq and Afganistan who arrive in Greece through Turkey. - To help health workers and volunteers to develop personal/peer strategies to cope with the high levels of their own personal traumas as a result of what they encounter whilst doing their job. - To develop resources on open access for health workers, undergraduate and post graduate students who can use them for research projects and other learning, related to the emotional/psychological needs of refugees and health workers in the front line of service provision. - To create a network, a place where members of various communities can come together to discuss, comment, brainstorm, share views and good practices, share experiences, innovate, create, connect and collaborate. Number and profile of participating organisations: Six organisations took part in this project: 1) MIDDLESEX UNIVERSITY (UK) (the co-ordinator), 2) ASSOCIATIA EDUNET (RO), 3) TECHNOLOGIKO PANEPISTIMIO KYPROU (CY), 4) UNIVERSITAT DE VALENCIA (SP), 5) KOCAELI UNIVERSITESI (TR), 6) ASSOCIATION DOCTORS OF THE WORLD-GREEK DEPARTMENT (GR). Organisations 1, 3, 4, 5 are universities. Organisations 2 and 6 are NGOs/associations. The main activities in the project were: - The creation of an exciting user friendly KHub platform. - The production of materials presenting the Facts, Figures, Policies & Legislation and syntheses of literature, media reports & commentaries related to the current waves of migrants into Europe. - The production of personal and reconstructed narratives about health workers, volunteers and migrant lived in experiences. - The identification of psychological support tools and best practices. - The delivery of workshops, webinars, social media discussions etc with the participation of migrants/refugees, health workers, volunteers and experts. - The provision of KHub information and tools for networking and blogging. - The provision of training on how to navigate and make the most of the KHub. Results and impact attained: All objectives and activities planned have been achieved. In summary the project achieved the following: - A Khub with rich, useful and accessible information, personal stories, videos, learning units, networking sites and links to relevant websites for all target groups as well as short instructive videos on how to navigate the KHub; - A mobile app for recording and submitting a 'personal story' free to download for android and iOS devices; - A blog site which allows individuals from the target groups to contribute a blog; - Training, in the form of workshops, webinars and seminars. Information about the project was disseminate throughout the two years via facebook, twitter and mailing lists. This enabled us to have a global reach and to engage with other organisations and individuals who offered their support and help to the project. By the 1st September the KHub received almost 95K visits and the blog site 292,. All partners disseminated information about the project in national and international meetings/conferences to over 5K individuals. The national seminars were attended by 229 individuals and the two webinars by 100 individuals from a number of countries. Examples of impact are described in section 6.1 of this report. Here is one which is not included in other sections: We were contacted by a group of UK high school students studying drama who chose to enact some of the stories in the KHub for their GCSE exams. They said: "... [we] have decided to base our project ...on Syrian refugees. We ... felt it is still an issue happening today and we want to inform more people about it ... we want to portray it in an emotional and realistic way. ... In the performance we want to illustrate a story of a young Syrian girl fleeing her country.... We are using real-life interviews from your website, so we can make it as realistic as possible. We felt that your IENE knowledge hub helped us to fulfil the role of making it verbatim theatre. ...we are planning to project your logo to make people aware of your inspirational project". Longer-term benefits: The KHub will be maintained for at least 5 yrs post end of the project. It will also be the platform for the IENE8 project.