Youth Together for Refugees

TOOLKIT ENGLISH

TOOLKIT ITALIAN

TOOLKIT SPANISH

TOOLKIT GREEK

Youth Together for Refugees is an ERASMUS+ funded project designed by a consortium of partners actively involved in the reception, education and advocacy for asylum seekers and refugees, particularly to the very young ones.

In Europe, services related with the care of young refugees are often possible thanks to large numbers of youth workers and volunteers that decide to dedicate their time and energies to a just cause, improving the level of integration and wellbeing of the target group they’re working with.

However, young volunteers often do not possess the right training to work with vulnerable individuals such as young refugees; and often operate in contexts where budget and structures are at low levels.

Indeed, this project was born from an analysis regarding the conditions of youth workers and young refugees within the reception, accommodation and recreational centres. We define these places as “high pressure environments” according to common aspects: crowded; highly diverse users for age, nationality, gender, social origin and education; insufficient or untrained staff; insufficient economic and material conditions.

We believe that Youth workers are crucial actors in promoting socialization and inclusion, to develop inter-subjective skills for the refugees’ future life as European citizens. Thanks to their age, energies and enthusiasm, they’re often able to build trust relationships and become role models for young refugees like no other.

However, youth workers themselves pointed out the lack of adequate timing, sufficient budget and the need of training focusing both on the individual worker and around their target group. With this project, we want to answer to these needs since we believe that to bridge these gaps is not only possible but also right.

Objectives

This project aims to collect best practices from all of the partners’ countries to reach as more youth workers as possible and provide them with the right tools to address their daily work-life, to acquire new skills fostering their success and future achievements; promoting multidisciplinary approaches and empowerment for a positive social change, in line with the European values of democracy and active citizenship

Activities

1. Provide training material through a toolkit, available in open source modality, to gather information about the most relevant topics regarding refugees and their assistance. Such as, trauma and wellbeing, work in diversity, interlanguage, interfaith and more.
2. Provide examples of practical activities that volunteers can use in high pressure contexts within low budget and unstructured locations, such as refugee camps, cultural or recreational centres and similar.
3. Organise one transnational training for a group of selected young volunteers that would follow presentations on the topics contained in the toolkit, testing and putting in practice also the very activities that we will propose.

The project will last 2 years during which the toolkit will be tested and presented to all relevant stakeholders and interested companies\NGOs, disseminating our activities and results.

Project partners:

• Andalucía Acoge – Spain
• Itaka Training – Italy
• KANE Κοινωνική Ανάπτυξη Νέων / Social Youth Development – Greece
• Kairos Europe Ltd – United Kingdom