Southern European Migrant Dilemmas: Better Integration Methods

This is an Erasmus+ KA1 staff mobility project promoted by Kairos Europe and featuring a consortium including 2 other UK organisations: Wellfield Education and Red Ochre, and and Itaka Training, our course provider in Southern Italy.

We wanted to carry out this project because our staff is involved almost on a daily basis in activities with non EU migrants and refugees arriving to the UK after they have lived in other Southern EU countries.

Participating in the course in Italy gave our staff the possibility to better understand the problem refugees go through, experience on the field what it’s like for them to land in Europe and what problems they have to face once arrived in what they see has “the promised land”.

We believe that the participation in the project allowed our staff to increase their understanding of the problem and gain new skills on the field. Experiencing these issues first hand is not comparable to learning them via the media and by word of mouth. Moreover it's having a great impact on the people they work with in the UK because they have now clearer idea of the problem and a better understanding of their needs.

Establishing links with organizations based in Southern Italy is meant to allow organizations to develop new strategies and techniques in the day by day work they do in the UK.

The main objectives:

- To give the participants the opportunity to develop their training skills, methods and attitudes. Through this project they got new ideas on how to update their approach and methods and help migrants/refugees in needs. It also gave the participants the confidence to develop a more international approach in their day by day work.
- To deepen the co-operation with partners abroad in order to develop new projects in the future. It was important for the participants to have the opportunity to meet other professionals working in the same filed and share with them good practices as well as doubts and point of views.
- To develop our internationalization strategy.
- To increase in the consortium staff knowledge of the migrants/refugees issue across Europe and being more confident in their job.
- To allow our staff to get new knowledge in how to promote social inclusion and intercultural exchange among learners and groups they deal with coming from different backgrounds and cultures.
- To share on a local, regional, national level the idea that refugees can and have to be seen as a richness and not only as a problem.
- To acquire new skills, methods and techniques in the promoting of common European values, intercultural dialogue and tackle of social exclusion.

Staff members: