Cafe Europe has the goal to build a strong, fertile social and business growing ground for youth which will provide social inclusiveness, help refuges and migrants build a stable network for themselves and to help them enter the market, and solve many socials problems related to the migration of youth. The result of this project will be a low-key meeting place for social and commercial activity in every European country. Whilst the project partners in this project take care of finding the right place in the community where they can open up a cafe in (like a local school, library, meeting place etc) the target group can focus on developing their own skills. The Cafes will help youth migrants and refugees, but also native youngsters developing socials skills, learn the culture of the host country, expand their network and gain working experience. The cafe serves as a place for the target group to gain work experience, but also to provide a space to sell, for instance, second hand clothing, crafts, paintings etc., and therefore have a space to build their own portfolio and CV in order to reach up to employment in other areas. They will be encourages to take up projects together with native youngsters, like organising an event or a special weekend. Besides the business side of the meeting place, the cafe will focus on integration, learning the local language and customs, preparing the youth for education or work. A strong focus will lie on what the youth CAN do in stead of what they lack or can't (yet) do. Cafe Europe provides a safe place to gain working experience, learn the local language and customs for young migrants and refugees by working together with local youth (organisations). This can either be a first stepping stone to getting into school, finding a job or to start their own business. It is vital for young refugees and migrants to have such a place to develop themselves because statistically speaking, a large part of refugees and migrants never reach the line of becoming financially independent. Many of them remain dependent on benefits of the government for their entire life even though most of them would like more than to become financially independent and run their own lives. It is a shame that this is not the reality in Europe yet but the project Cafe Europe wants to give the same opportunities to migrants and refugees that the native European people have. The same opportunities for everybody to become financially independent and to make the most of their own lives. This will give them a much stronger position in society and to find their own network that they can built on further. The participants of this project will be taught how to run projects themselves and also the entrepreneurial skills to further maximise their own talents, for example on how to sell their art, cooking etc. They will be encouraged to find out what their dreams are and to make a plan on how to make this come true. Everybody that has worked in the cafe will be asked to give something back to the community, for example help future youth migrants and refugees that enter the country through this cafe by becoming a volunteer later on. This will create a cycle of a revolving project that will continue long after the grant and the project period from Erasmus+ has ended. The grant from Erasmus+ will function as a catalyst, to help the project partners to initiate this great project for the youth migrants and refugees in Europe. The Cafe Europe in each country can function as a social enterprise on its own after the project period. We will work together in project with 7 partners from The Netherlands, Greece, Czech Republic and Turkey. We will develop: 1. How to set up a Cafe Europe (handbook for anyone who would like to create a Cafe Europe) 2. How to support newcomers working in a Cafe Europe (handbook for youth workers and volunteers that coordinate the cafe and coach/mentor the newcomers/youth) 3. How to get most out of my Cafe Europe experience (training course for newcomers and native youth) 4. Online platform (for presenting the online training content course for newcomers and native youth, but also the handbook for the youth workers and volunteers and the handbook on how to set up a Cafe Europe)
Cafe Europe wants/wanted to give young migrants/refugees, and local youth as well, the base for their future working carreer. We will start by providing them knowledge and tools for personal leadership, to start working on that they CAN do instead of focussing on that they can't. We have created a thorough process that can be followed by other European countries so that in a couple of years each EU country has at least one such a cafe to facilitate the collaboration between youth migrants and refugees. The project serves as a first trial in 4 countries, to test how setting up such a meeting place works, what things we should consider, and combine all these experiences in guides as tools for other organisations to also be able to set up such a cafe/meeting place.
All partner countries have taken in a lot of refugees/migrants and are looking for the best ways to help this target group to make a stable life for themselves. The migration flow is making an overwhelming impact in many countries in Europe. Public institutions show active commitment in dealing with the issue in the EU, hovewer, the number of NGOs working in the field is far from adequate. The need that we address with the project is the slow and difficult integration of refugees. The migrants go through a heavy journey, often filled with traumatic events. When they arrive, they go through a slow bureaucratic process and almost all choices are made for the migrants. This combination of the traumatic journey and bureaucracy often result in the loss of identity and a lethargic attitude. We aim to address the challenge by re-sparking the enormous resilience the people have and support them in finding back their identity and gaining control over their life and future. Needs of the migrants/refugees are often that they would like to get in touch with the local society, but that's quite difficult. They would like to connect on a same level, not in a hierarchical relation such as mentor and mentee.