Express project has as general objective empower young migrants and refugees, creating and/or strengthening - where existing - supporting services for the development of self-enterprises by this target population. This goal will be reached also by strengthening the cooperation among all actors involved in the field of work integration of disadvantaged groups. In fact, employment is widely recognized as crucial factor for the integration of migrants into host societies at global level (OECD and European Commission, 2016), but it is still difficult to reach it by first generation migrants and refugees because of 3 main elements: skills, knowledge of specific context and existing networks, access to funding. To reach this general objective the partnership wants to implement an exchange of good practices in order to: 1) develop and reinforce networks, share and confront ideas, practices and methods among different type of organizations that are dealing or willing to approach work integration of young migrants/refugees through self-entrepreneurship; 2) collect all practices covering the entire value chain for self-entrepreneurship: a. competence assessment of young migrants/refugees; b. training on self-entrepreneurship; c. mentoring scheme; d. informative campaign; e. networking activities; f. support to access financing/social financing. 3) spreading knowledge, sharing results to promote project results. The project foresees specific communication and dissemination activities, because these are key elements to allow other organizations to benefit from the project and to activate local (regional/national) networks. Project activities are divided into 3 main steps: - Project Management and Dissemination activity: …..; - Transnational Project Meetings: their purpose is not just to monitor the realisation of project activities, but as opportunity to share knowledge and experience among partners and other stakeholders, since the hosting partner will organise a study visit at selected organisations. For this reason, each TPM has a specific focus, depending on the hosting organisation and his local networks expertise; - LTTA: fundamental to give a space for peer to peer confrontation on the key elements that make this kind of services successful, through an analysis of the work done within the TPM study visits and defining which are the axioms of a common model to be adopted by all partners' countries. Main results expected by the project and its implementation are: - Create a system of work for the future implementation of a wider network among actors in the field of work integration of migrants/refugees to make them work together and produce effective impact for quality employment and to give a contribution in the decrease of young migrants/refugees’ unemployment rates and social exclusion, especially in South European countries; - Increased capacity to work in European contexts and to participate/manage European Union funded project, furthermore create a network of organizations that could work beyond the lifecycle of the project itself; - Collect best practices at EU level in order to elaborate a common model to be experimented and adapted at local level to favor the empowerment of these target groups. At local level it’s important to share common practices drawn-up at EU level by partners, verifying their effective applicability, taking care of local legislation, custom habits, rate of migrants on local population and any other issue. The role of partners and their local network is to promote local and Regional policies to ease the implementation of best practices to adopt desired impacts, i.e. easing mentoring schemes of collaboration between employers and host associations, between financial intermediaries and beneficiaries willing a self-entrepreneurship route, among local associations to promote social insertion. To project, experiment and put on track an innovative model to deal with migrants and refugees will add substantial impact at local/regional level in any partners’ country and, combining similar experiences, the model will contribute to improve European migrants and refugees’ policy. The consortium operating in this project is composed by 8 partners (plus associated partners) and strongly enriched by their diversity, they represent different background and countries, size, type but all joining because of the willingness to support young people in finding their way in work and social life. Project partners have been selected mainly for their expertise and possibility to integrate each other, in fact they work in specific field of the imagined services value chain, in EXPRESS project are represented 2 VET organisations, 2 social enterprises, 1 EU network, 2 development agency, 1 foundation.
The main idea was to deepen and to spread knowledge about different approaches and steps to form persons with refugee background into successful entrepreneurs and freelancers. Especial goals consisted in strengthen the local network of different actors already active in the field, to identify additional resources, weak points, preconditions for successful activities, to improve the knowledge transfer across Europe. This project had 3 specific objectives: 1) Allow partners’ organizations to develop and reinforce networks, increase their capacity to operate at transnational level, share and confront ideas, practices and methods and structuring an EXPRESS network between different type of organizations that are dealing or willing to approach work integration of young migrants/refugees through self-entrepreneurship for the creation of a future project proposal collecting all key factors to structure a common model to be adapted to different EU contexts; 2) Collect all practices shared among partners and covering the entire value chain for self- entrepreneurship schemes across Europe, that can be divided in: a. competence assessment of young migrants/refugees; b. training on self-entrepreneurship; c. mentoring scheme; d. informative campaign; e. networking activities; f. support to access financing/social financing. 3) Spreading knowledge, sharing project results to raise awareness and start-up a dedicated network (community of practices). The project foresees specific communication and dissemination activities, because these are key elements to allow other organizations to benefit from the project, activate local (regional/national) networks and promote the adhesion to EXPRESS network.
Several Member States within the EU have traditionally been destinations for migrants (from within or outside the EU). This flow of migrants has led to a range of new skills on local labour markets but also to higher rates of unemployment. The integration of migrants and refugees has increasingly become a key area for policy focus, with measures to prepare immigrants and their descendants so they may be more active participants in society, for example, through labour market participation. The project identified the need of improving the level of key competences and skills of young people, specifically migrants and refugees, as well as to promote their participation in democratic life in Europe and the labour market and social inclusion, through self-entrepreneurship. It si thus fundamental for the organisations in the field to have prepared staff that could support migrants build their own enterprise . The project wanted to implement an exchange of good practices built around a the concept of EMPOWERMENT meant as the set of measures designed to increase the degree of autonomy and self-determination in people and in communities to enable them to represent their interests in a responsible and self-determined way.