Migration is an opportunity to promote the enrichment of our own cultures and face the future with better prospects. However, due to the serious refugee crises, especially that of 2019, the attitude against the inclusion and acceptance of all these people who have had to leave their homes due to war, persecution, or hunger is becoming widespread in the European society. This exclusion has led to an unsustainable situation for these migrants, which has now been dramatically worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic, not only worsening their chances of inclusion but seriously endangering their lives. Youth has the key to reverse these attitudes based on hatred and racism, becoming active agents for diversity, inclusion, and the values of citizenship. This is why an intersectorial and complementary association of entities (FRACTALS and SOVINT from Spain, AMMI and F.EMMANUEL from Italy, and VICE VERSA CZ from the Czech Republic) now propose the project NARRATIVES OF RESISTANCE: ESCAPE ROOM LEARNING FOR GAMING INCLUSION, which will create an appealing and dynamic course (ONE OF US) that not only teaches locals and refugee youth, but also turns them into agents for inclusion. In order to accomplish this, far from using traditional teaching methods that do not adapt to the reality and interests of these young people, we propose a very innovative gaming methodology based on the combination of highly successful current methodologies: the educational escape room, storytelling, and the theater of those oppressed. Thus, the learning of the young participants will be carried out through an itinerary of sessions, each of them developing a plot that will lead to an outcome built through their decisions and skills (both locals and refugees, as they must work together in them). The participants will put themselves in the shoes of persons who have left their home behind, surely their family too, and possibly everything they had worked for during their lives, facing the challenges of achieving inclusion in an aggressive environment, all of this through audiovisual resources, support materials, and interaction within a pre-established story. However, this appealing non-formal and informal learning methodology masks a course for the development of high-quality competencies with well-defined programming and objectives, and extensive contents created by experts (instructors, sociologists, pedagogues...) and refugees themselves. Thus, the course will be based in turning its participants into the main characters of a story that will allow them to detect prejudice, understand how other people interact, and understand one of the harshest realities there is: the life of a person in a strange land, in a precarious situation, who must also face an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. The proposed Intellectual Output will include everything necessary so those entities that wish to train the target groups have what they need to launch this course for free and online: from the guide that shows them the course schedule, its contents, a detailed description of the methodology, to the way to implement the training workshops, and the training resources and materials necessary to successfully overcome the story (character sheets with their stories, based on real experiences from LIBRARY OF LIFES, description of scenarios, simple scenery elements to place the participants on the stage -like drawings etc.-, action cards...). To develop all these results, multiple national activities will be carried during 24 months of hard workout with the target groups, including virtual meetings, 3 Transnational Meetings, and a large Multiplier Event in Valencia. This project will have a great impact on European youth, who will discover in an autonomous and personal way the reality of migration and the importance of collaborating with migrants to promote their inclusion; also in volunteers, instructors, and youth technicians from many different European entities, who will find resources to carry out their own workshops, and to replicate the materials adapting them to their specific field; and also in escape rooms throughout Europe, which will provide great dissemination, use, and replication capabilities to this project. This impact aims to collaborate in improving the skills and capabilities for solidarity and inclusion of young people across Europe at a time like the one we are experiencing due to the COVID19 pandemic, when it is more necessary than ever that we all collaborate to overcome this crisis, and especially help those who are least protected, such as refugees and migrants.
With this context of migration crisis in mind, added to the ignorance of society (especially young people) about the reality of migrants, we set out to improve their quality of life and inclusion by increasing society’s awareness of this harsh situation. To achieve it, we devised the project “NARRATIVES OF RESISTANCE: ESCAPE ROOM LEARNING FOR GAMING INCLUSION”, with which we have generated highly impactful tools so that not only the promoters, but also social entities, local governments, youth associations, scout groups, etc. can work with local young people to promote the values of tolerance, respect, and citizenship. Society, entities, and European governments must not forget the hundreds of thousands of people in refugee camps, who arrive with nothing and must face the unknown, misery, society’s distrust, and recently even a pandemic without adequate preparation. Thus, we wanted to turn young people into active participating agents for diversity, teaching them the necessary processes to achieve full inclusion that makes life easier for many youth born outside Europe.
When the creation of this project began to be considered, its promoters were well aware of the severe barriers that migrants and refugees face when trying to build a home again once they arrive in a host country. Precisely in 2019 there was an unprecedented refugee crisis, so we saw the urgent need to dedicate our efforts to raise awareness in the European society, especially among young people, on promoting inclusion and cultural diversity as a powerful tool to build a better and stronger society and community. According to the UNHCR report, 63.311 people risked their lives trying to reach Europe between January and September 2019, and more than 1.028 drowned in the first half of that year… when the COVID-19 pandemic hadn’t even arrived yet. With these data in mind, the 5 entities forming this project wanted to address the clear need to promote the inclusion of these people by raising awareness among youth, developing their values, their citizenship, and participation, by showing them the harsh reality of migration, which they don’t usually know, and allowing them to be the protagonists of this improvement