The international training course focused focused on two main issues:
- The immigration related issues in connection to the refugee crisis and discrimination towards immigrants and
- Emigration of young people in connection to youth unemployment.
Our training course brought together youth workers from across EU (Romania, Hungary, Italy, Greece and United Kingdom), Western Balkan (Serbia) and Eastern Partnership Countries (Moldova, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Armenia) to discuss the topics of migration and mobility in Europe and its consequences to youth and youth work. Each country has specific experience of the topics, and this was shared throughout the course.
According to International Organization for Migration (IOM) more than million immigrants came to Europe from outside. Additionally there is even bigger migration going on inside Europe, which is constantly increasing. There are different triggers and causes, push and pull factors for migration which affects everyday life of all Europeans. There is forced migration and voluntary migration, different reasons and consequences of migration which have led to new migration routes. All Europe is affected by migration, and especially young people, who are one of the most mobile groups and the ones who determine how the future Europe will look like. For this it’s important that people working with young people would be aware of the causes, opportunities and consequences of migration and could support both – young emigrants and immigrants, refugees by creating opportunities, fighting discrimination and providing support these young people need. Our consortium has initiated a local research regarding to explore the needs for our project within our local communities. We have made a research with local governments through personal meetings, statistics of young people and families left from the towns, number of migrants and refugees has arrived, challenges they face with…Then we have organised community events with youth workers, teachers, social workers, etc. through focus groups discussions and online questionnaires and addressed and assessed the needs of young migrants, immigrants and refugees, kids who lost their family members because of emigration, or just came home from other countries they lived a longer time or even was born. And of course, we have done a research among young people we work with e.g. local young people with migrant background, or local young people just came home from other countries, etc. through questionnaires and discussion through workshops e.g. challenges they face with, etc. All results were uploaded in our common closed Facebook group and we could compare and assess the hottest issues we need to tackle within our youth work activities.
We hosted 89 participants in the 2 projects and all were youth work practitioners: youth workers, cultural ‘animators’ working with youth and youth support workers. Their target groups are rural youth, unemployed young people, minority members, young refugees and migrants.
“Here To Stay 1st Training course - 20-29 April 2018, Manchester, United Kingdom
“Here To Stay 2nd Training course - 10-17 November 2018, Sfantu Gheorghe, Romania
The following methods were used during our mobilities: cooperative learning, experiential learning, montage, theatre of oppressed, creating a jigsaw, working in national teams, in mixed teams, individual and pair work etc.
