As the conflict in Syria approaches its 8th year, the Middle East, North Africa and Europe are dealing with the worst humanitarian disaster since the Second World War. The unprecedented refugee crisis is increasingly spilling over to affect apart from the wider region, also Europe. Reality shows that refugee people face a range of barriers to enter urban life in their new countries, especially related to the fact that the municipality is not prepared for dealing with refugee people. This situation has forced municipalities and local authorities to assume key roles in managing the crisis by providing services and integrating refugees into their communities. The refugee crisis has also caused social tensions so ensuring social cohesion by involving both refugees and host communities in joint activities will contribute to improved relations, coexistence and stability within host municipalities. The project of "Supporting Public Education Centers' Educators for Refugee Adaptation" (PEC4R) addresses inclusive support for training of the municipal Public Edducational Centers' (PEC) educators to provide well-qualified education, so they can cope with refugee adults often lacking the language skills they can fully participate, and are also affected by the traumas of war that are fully disabled and integrated. Municipal PEC educators facing such problems should be more prepared to know how to deal with it. Ensuring the provision of a modular training that addresses the main issues (integration, adaptation, language, war traumas, dealing with stress, right of refugees) should form an important part of the response to the current challenges. This training and supporting will combat at source some of the factors contributing to education failure of these people, while it would aid in combatting the risk of integration problems to urban life. Supporting material provided consists of an illustrated handbook for the PEC educators with accompanying printed/mobile/online supporting tools that will support the advisor throughout the different challenges they face nowadays. Equally, the supporting tools will also work towards engaging PEC educators and refugee people in a manner that is novel, attractive for both the municipality and the refugees (beneficiary). The outcomes can be easily multiplied across all cities that harbor refugee by applying the concept of open resources, commons creative licensing and free mobile and online applications. Our consortium: 1- Coordinator: Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University, Public University, Turkey 2- Phoneix KM, NGO, Beligum 3- SoftQNR, software development company, Serbia. 4- Konya Municipality, Turkey 5- Izmir Bakırçay University, Public University, Turkey 6- Secondary Education Directorate of Karditsa, National Public Body, Greece The project's main target groups are: - Municipalities and their PEC educators: Every EU municipality network will be invited to the project portal, while contacts will be made also with local supporting initiatives. - Pedagogical and psychological experts: Material will be readily available to these stakeholders and will be implementable default in 5 languages, while translations can be done freely. - Refugee adults (living in the city): They are to benefit from an approach that allows them to deal with their war traumas, being supported by teaching staff that is aware of the sensitivities and the special requirements needed for these people to integrate into their city environments and the host country. Long-term benefits The desired impact of PEC4R is a universal one, due to the global occurrence of the refugee problem. This is reflected in below local, regional, national, European and/or international impact assessments. It is expected that the PEC4R will provide supporting material for all affected PECs as well as other adult edcuation institutions in all partner countries at the end of the project, while transfers to other languages will also support the take-up.
This project aimed to support PEC educators by providing guidelines on how to support refugees both in a pedagogical and a psychological manner. This project also aims to contribute to their mental and psychological wellbeing. The project aims to equip PEC educator with a set of competencies and tools that allows them to: • Understand the legal framework of adult refugees and their international protection; • Direct refugee trainers to the right information about urban life; • Manage their stress and mental well-being, while dealing with traumatic situations; • Improve their communication with adult refugees; • Learn the ways of non-verbal communication and its importance in interactions with adult refugees. Project also aimed to create a mobile application & online elearning platform through which the outputs can be disseminated easily to large numbers of our target group.
Our project was developed with the aim of supporting public education centres (PEC) educators in dealing with disadvantaged people with a refugee background. There are lots of challenges for refugees in urban life adaptation, such as finding jobs, accommodation, having information about municipal procedures, accessing healthcare etc. However, policies developed as a solution to these problems do not give much emphasis on trainers. While municipalities play an important role in the education of adult refugee through PEC educators have mostly not received any adequate training. Therefore, the main aim of this project is to assist PEC educators who need proper guidelines on how to deal with the complicated, multi-faced refugee problem. The project also necessitated a multi-faceted (educational, psychological) partnership & a multi-country approach due to municipalities in EU facing similar challenges on migration.