Non-state actors play a crucial role in protecting migrants and asylum seekers upon arrival in the receiving countries, by providing various kinds of assistances, for example accommodation, food, medical support, legal guidance, and social support. The challenge of how to facilitate the inclusion of a growing number of migrants and asylum seekers and enhance their participation in the new societies has been increasingly gaining importance in many host countries. To respond to these issues, non-state actors need to work towards innovative practices to face present and future challenges. Collaboration among different actors is a resource and a tool for improvement in this regard. As a result, our project aims to support civil society in their efforts to facilitate the inclusion of asylum seekers into society by providing the participating partners with a space where they can interact, share experiences, tools, best practices and can exchange innovative concepts. The project ‘Including Together’ targets two types of beneficiaries: direct beneficiaries, namely professionals in the social sector, and indirect beneficiaries, namely young adults who arrived to Europe as asylum seekers. Objectives can be also divided into direct and indirect ones. On one hand, the overall indirect objective of the project is the facilitation of the inclusion of asylum seekers into society. Inclusion into host society refers to multiple aspects, to name a few, access to the job market; access to training and volunteering opportunities; access to local networks such as sport clubs and cultural circuits; access to public discussion and public life; access to medical care. For new comers, specifically for asylums seekers, the access might be restrained due to legal, cultural, or language barriers, or by a lack of economic resources. On the other hand, direct objectives include: - Create a network of the organizations working in the field of migration - Share the best practices and methodologies connected with the management of migration among partner organisations and civil society - Strengthen cooperation and knowledge sharing between partner organization included in project - Raise quality of activities implemented by project partners by providing them with set of skills and knowledge The transnational reach of this exchange will lead to a broader perspective on the issues, while working towards the improvement of support strategies in favour of new comers and host societies. It also represents a step towards the development of a long-term strategy beyond national practices. The project will achieve the following results: - Strengthened organisations/institutions’ capacities and competences to work with migrants and asylum seekers on generating innovation in integration approaches as well as in transnational cooperation - Collected examples of innovative practice of integration at local, national and European level - A set of tools and guidelines for practitioners and follow-up projects - Increase an awareness about migration among civil society - Divulgation of information on the Erasmus+ and promotion of future cooperation Fifty among social workers, psychologists, nurses, cultural mediators, educators, senior representatives and other profiles will participate to the project, which will unfold in two phases. During phase one, field visits will take place in each partner’s country, whereby each organisation will introduce their reception system. Attention will be given to accommodation, psychosocial and medical support, education, employment, social integration, administrative procedures in relation to the national policy framework. Visits will include reception structures and presentations of other relevant local actors in the field. The aim of the field visits is to share with partners all necessary information for them to understand the issues at stake, how the host partner is organised, what good practices are already in place and what issues remain open. During the second phase, we will organise thematic workshop. Based on the input from the field visits and on the various expertise, partners will be assigned a theme among the following on
Luxembourg, France and Belgium as well a lot of European countries are daily facing the arrival of asylum seekers. NGO-s play an important role offering shelter and different services like social service, medical support and legal guidance. A particularly important and challenge element of the every day work is to create the possibilities for the inclusion of a growing numbers of migrants and asylum seekers in the hosting society. To facilitate their inclusion and the integration, NGO need to extend their knowledge toward innovative practices to respond the future challenge they are facing ahead while working with migrants and asylum seekers. For that reason the three partners organization Luxembourgish Red Cross, Belgium Red Cross and Aurore implemented a two years project to give the possibility and space to their members organization to know and share their daily work and best practices from the field. The use of different working methods in the two years project gave the possibilities to the partners: • To know and to understand the different context of each countries • To know the legal conditions of asylum procedure as well the legal basis for access to employment, education and health system • To share practice and methodologies of their daily work • To create contact with the different NGO and public institutions The objectives Our main aim was to support civil society in their efforts to facilitate the inclusion of asylum seekers into society by proving the participating partners with a space where they can interact, share experiences, tools, best practices and can exchange innovative concepts. The direct objectives were: • Create a network of the organization working in the field of migration and asylum seekers • Share the best practice and methodologies connected with the management of migration among partner organization and civil society • To strength cooperation and knowledge sharing between partner organization included in the project. • To raise quality of activities implemented by project partners by proving them with set of skills and knowledge Number and type of participants During the two years project we aimed to include as many members of the three organizations as possible. The three partners organization have a high number of members and localized in different part of the three countries. Firstly, we aim to have different members for every field visit and theme workshop. In every field visit there were 5 members per organization. During the organization of the three-field visit, in total 45 members participated. In every theme workshops 10 members per organization participated. During the organization of theme workshops, in total 91 members participated. In both field visit and theme workshop other members of three organization came to join in different session and during the nonformal meetings. In this way aimed to include more people. We aimed to have participants with different and various profile from decision makers of the organization till people that work direct in the field. In indirect way members of the ngo were included and as well members of public institutions. Other members of the organization that could not participated, they had the possibility to know the project, the results and the best practice via sharing platform or email exchange. Activities In the beginning of the project we organized the first kick of meeting in Arlon Belgium the 3rd of Octobre. The aim of the 1st kick of meeting was to decide the steps of the implementation of project during the two years, the communication basis during the project between partners, the detailed information about budget expenses and as well the organization of the field visits. Three field visits took place during the first year of the project. The aim of the field visit was to know the work of the partner organizations, their practices, the collaboration with other organization and public institutions. First field visit took place in Paris from 10.12.2018 from 13.12 2018. The second field visit 11.02-14.02 2019 in Belgium. The third field visit took place in Luxembourg from 1.04:2019 to 04.04 2019 in Luxembourg In the second part of the project we organized three theme workshoped: • First theme workshop took place in from 7 October 2019 till 9 October 2019 in Luxembourg: The organization of “accueil” as first phase for the inclusion of asylum seekers • Second theme workshop took place 27.01.2020-29.01.2020 in Belgium: Training, education and integration of asylum seekers and refugees • Third theme workshop took place in Paris from 02.03.2020-04.03.2020 in France: Accommodation and access to sousing for persons seeking international protection and persons benefiting from international protection Results and impact In the project proposal, we want to achieve as an impact to increase the competences of participants in supporting and initiating projects and programs to improve the inclusion of asylum seekers into host societies. The three organizations had the possibility to learn new projects and new working methodologies. For example, the Red Cross had the possibility to introduce the tools to identify refugee’s vulnerability since their arrival. The organization Aurore and Belgium Red Cross aim to introduce this method among their members organization to facilitate the everyday work with refugees. Another example was also the tool working with minors introduced from Belgium Red Cross. The team of Luxembourgish Red Cross aim to implement this tool in the center of Lily Unden. The presentation of the project “Les bons voisins” from Aurore give new ideas and inputs for the Luxembourgish and Belgium Red Cross that they want to implement in local level. For example in Luxembourg, in the Schmelz neighborhood where is one of the Luxembourgish Red Cross center they are collaborating with local organization to work in similar project like “les bons voisins”. We shared all the presentations and tools also with all other members of three organizations that did not participate directly to give them the possibility to get to know new working methodologies.