Worldwide increasing numbers of migration, be it because of wars, civil wars, economic reasons or climate change, face the European societies with the challenge to receive the refugees and migrants and offer them opportunities for their future life. At the same time, many European countries have a lack of skilled workers, especially young ones. Thus it is obvious to support and motivate the young people to start a high quality vocational training and there are several attempts in this direction, especially in Germany. But still the transition of migrants to the life of work needs to be improved, many drop out of schools or vocational training, despite a wide range of support and preparation measures. Even in case of a successful start into vocational training trainees with a migration background have complex problems that endanger a successful completion of training, maybe due to inadequate accompanying support or false expectations and but also due to a lack of technical and methodological skills and a lacking overall strategy for the inclusion of this target group. The project "EQUITY - equal opportunities and inclusion in vocational education and training for young refugees and migrants" starts here. Its objective is to combine good practice experience with successful inclusion of refugees and migrants from all over Europe, to use synergy effects and develop a holistic pedagogical strategy for better inclusion which is accompnied by various curricular modules and a practical toolkit for practical use. The overall objective is that the target group will be prepared to be active members of the European societies and find an for them adequate way into the work life. At the same time, teachers are supported in dealing better with diversity and integration and in learning from each other at European level. Project partners working in general and vocational education and partners from the social and communal sector cooperate in order to have high synergy effects. They come from countries with a high percentage of migrants (Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden) and which thus have experience in dealing with the problems but also the potential of migrants. All partners have good networks and will be able to disseminate and implement the project's results to a broad public. These results will be developed in nationally mixed working groups and in the dialogue and exchange of all partners. They include the development of a holistic strategy for inclusion, based on literature research, systematic collection of existing knowledge/approaches and a SWOT analysis. On this basis, curriculum modules will be developed which complement existing ones in order to improve them and which are supposed to be used flexible according to specific need of different institutions or countries. Finally, the modules will be underpinned by a toolkit of practical useful materials which support holistic learning and can be used by teachers, trainers and directly the target group itself. All results will be available as open educated resources on the project website in different languages, ready for use and further development. It is expected that the results will be useful for all persons working with refugees and migrants in the phase of transition between school and work life and because of the possibility of their flexible use we expect them to be of high impact and European value. The pedagogical strategy behind especially will be interesting for policy makers.
The aim was to improve the holistic social integration of young people through curricular modules based on the idea of empowerment and action orientation, complementing and improving the quality of existing pathways. At the same time, teachers were supported to better deal with diversity and integration and to learn from each other at European level. In the practical implementation of the project, complementary modules to existing concepts and curricula for the integration of refugees were developed. They can be used and implemented in different ways in different countries. In addition, concrete teaching materials were developed, tested and evaluated by the partners.
Many European countries face the challenge of providing young refugees with life and career prospects, either so that they can be successfully integrated into society or so that they can use their skills when they return to their country of origin. As there is also a great need for skilled workers with practical skills in many European countries, it is of great interest to enable young people to make a successful transition into the labour market and to become active members of society. So far, many young refugees do not make a smooth transition between school and work, either because of false expectations, a lack of technical, linguistic and methodological skills, or social problems. The situation is similar in many European countries, especially when intercultural differences require adaptation efforts from all parties involved. As the immigration of young people to Europe, due to war or other reasons, has been going on for a long time and will continue in the future, there are already different concepts, measures and approaches in different countries to deal with the social integration of young immigrants, especially refugees. The aim of the project was to improve the existing approaches in a European cooperation, taking into account both professional and social aspects. We developed flexible curriculum modules that can be used across Europe to better prepare young people for future working life and successful integration into the host community, e.g. through approaches to better mutual understanding that do not primarily focus on language and cognitive learning.