The proposed 24-month action will increase social inclusion in groups of young migrants and develop professional capacity of their educators in Finland, Greece and Lebanon. Context: The number of migrants entering Central and Northern Europe has dropped from the peak years of mid 2010's and integration work has taken increasingly bigger role in providing inclusion to migrants and refugees in their communities. However, Greece continues to receive up to 60,000 migrants per day (in 2018,https://www.unhcr.org/uk/greece.html) and Lebanon currently hosts 1.5 million Syrian refugees (http://reporting.unhcr.org/node/2520). The situation requires action. EU Cohesion Policy aims to support the social inclusion of young people in vulnerable positions (bit.ly/EU2020strategy). In order to reach this goal, third sector organizations working on social inclusion must have a holistic understanding of the phases of refugee journey, their situations and have the right tools to implement the knowledge into daily work. ACT-project ensures the exchange of knowledge and best practices to support the educators working with this target group. As world's largest youth organization, YMCA is in unique situation to support young refugees in different stages, coordinate activities, and exchange information within European and worldwide network. ACT partners bring different viewpoint, skills, and context to make the project impactful. YMCA Finland, YMCA Thessaloniki and YMCA Lebanon all work with refugees in very different environments: Lebanon on the front line answering the results of the conflict in Syria, Thessaloniki in Greece as the country of transit, and Finland as one country of destination with the focus on integration aspect. Partners have gathered invaluable knowledge and methods in supporting the social inclusion of young refugees. In their work, the partners have discovered the need to support not only the young people themselves, but the educators in their work. Great part of the knowledge that the educators apply in their work is tacit, which makes it difficult to share without the possibility for study visits. Observing others will give the partners perspective and opportunity to exchange practices of facilitating social inclusion. The main objectives of the ACT-project are to exchange experiences and best practices of supporting social inclusion of young refugees. This will be accomplished by developing the competences of the educators. Each partner will send four (4) coaches, youth workers, volunteers (later educators) who work with young refugees to learn and share best practices. There will be three (3) Training Visits, one in each country, and a Final Training for 24 educators at the end of ACT. The visits are designed to increase the educators' competence, support the educators by building a holistic understanding of the situations and contexts the refugees live in, and how it should be taken into consideration while planning and organizing activities for this target group. These 4-day Training Visits support both the individuals and the organizations by increasing awareness of the refugee situation and best practices in supporting their inclusion and psycho-social well-being. The key methods of learning are observing the activities and learning by doing. Sharing the methods, seeing them in action, and implementing them in different contexts helps the instructors reflect on their approach to work, adopt inclusive practices and ultimately ensure the social inclusion of the target groups. The Training Visits start in the summer 2020 and are organized once per season, one in each partner country. After the visits, there will be a Final Training event where all the methods are collected, learning is reinforced, and the methods are taught to new trainers to maximize the reach of best practices. Final Training is recorded, and results are disseminated to YMCAs in Europe and through World Alliance of YMCAs. The named Project Team will oversee the successful execution of ACT. The meets three (3) times during the project to make sure everything progresses as planned and the learned methods and activities are applied into work. The Kickoff meeting is held in the beginning and Final meeting at the end to summarize the project and disseminate the results to YMCA network worldwide. In between, there will be one Mid-term evaluation meeting. As a result, the educators will have learned to support the psycho-social well-being of their groups and increased their own competence. The young refugees in partner countries are benefiting from the training as their educators will have a larger variety of tools, better understanding of the holistic situation of refugees, and tools to support social inclusion and create increased cultural awareness. To ensure the continuation of the collaboration, the partners will use the existing worldwide YMCA network to establish a transnational network with emphasis on refugees.
The main objectives of the ACT-project were: - To exchange experiences and best practices of supporting social inclusion of young refugees. - Learn from other YMCAs and cultures as part of cultural competence building. To achieve this objective, we chose project partners that would bring different viewpoint, skills, and context to make the project impactful; Lebanon with the Syrian refugees and competence building, Thessaloniki in Greece as the country of transit with non-formal learning as their forte, and Finland as one country of destination with the focus on integration. One of the very main goals was to build a communication bridge between these organizations to ensure easier knowledge transfer. - Competence building: organize training sessions for the people working closely with the target group to ensure their knowledge and skills in encountering the target groups - Creating a training model that would be replicable in the future in other YMCAs - Network building: building stronger collaboration and a bridge between European and Lebanese YMCAs so that the flow of information would continue after the project and our target groups would receive culturally sensitive service in all European YMCAs.
Despite the drop in number of migrants entering Central and Northern Europe before the war in Ukraine, Southern Europe and Middle Eastern countries continued receiving refugees at a significant rate. In Northern Europe, the focus had moved from receiving migrants to their integration and inclusion. YMCAs all around Europe and nearby regions were working closely with these vulnerable groups. As world's largest youth organization, YMCA is in a unique situation to support young refugees in different stages, coordinate activities, and exchange information within European and worldwide network. Each local YMCA has a different perspective into supporting refugees, and there was dire need for exchange of information and training personnel in methods to increase social inclusion and cultural competence. This project was designed build connections between YMCAs working with refugees and to train partner organization's personnel and be the first step on building a common standard of encountering refugees and other vulnerable groups in a culturally sensitive way. This is also an integral part of EU Cohesion Policy, which aims to support the social inclusion of young people in vulnerable positions (bit.ly/EU2020strategy).