The project “Migrant, engaged and active” is an 18 moths project that aims to expand the reach of the migrant young people to access the structured dialogue in Germany. It involves 320 young migrants and refugees who otherwise have limited access to participate in local, national and European policy making process that directly affect their lives too. The project also aims to create opportunities for young people to train in wide ranging topics like entrepreneurship, intercultural competencies, conflict management and active social participation.
Migrant young people and refugees face an immense challenge of unemployment, school leaving, lack of active social and political participation. This limited participation in turn has resulted in policy recommendations and policies that are out of touch to these young people and did not effectively alleviate their barriers to integration at least in a sustainable way.
For these reasons there is a need for a more targeted dialogue between young migrant young people, civil societies, social enterprises, businesses, public bodies, politicians and other decision makers at the local, regional, national and European levels. This project in cooperation with other projects aims to address this need.
At the local level this project will bring young people from 7 different German cities in contact with local initiatives, municipal bodies, local police, local administration, educational institutes and youth organizations and enterprises together to discuss and promote local, national and European youth policies and facilitate the integration of migrant young people.
At the national level the project will organize a national meeting with 100 participants that will include youth migrants, youth experts, practitioners, policymakers and stakeholders to address the migrant youth issues especially, employment, entrepreneurship, social and democratic participation and social inclusion.
At the European level the outcomes and recommendations of local and national activities will be disseminated using transnational meetings and conferences that Migrafrica and partner organizations will take part and organize in the framework of EU – CoE youth partnership, Africa-Europe youth cooperation summits, ADYFE conference and others. We will also compile the results, and recommendations in publications compiling the results and recommendations of the activities that will serve as inputs for youth activities and youth policy making processes around Europe.
In this sense, this project aims to:
• Improve the dialogue between young people in risk situations and young immigrants with few chances with political decision-makers.
• Develop strategies and fundamental measures to improve the access and permanence of migrant youth in education system, reducing school drop-out rate in the region and improve access to the labor market.
• Create a set of recommendations aimed at minimizing concrete inclusive and some specific problems in the area of unemployment of young school leavers in the region within the African diaspora community.
• Create a strategic plan that provides better alignment between the African youth diaspora and their policy-makers, deconstructing stereotypes and preconceived perceptions existing political class and the community of immigrants.
• Bridge the gap in participation of the communities of African youth diaspora in the structured dialogue, allowing the local youths of specific groups, may influence the process of construction of youth policies at national and European level.
• Empower local youth associations, that have as their target audience African youth diaspora, about the opportunities that exist Erasmus +.
• Contribute to improving research and case studies to improve the youth policy, immigration and integration in the inclusive system of Germany and Europe.
The objectives of the project are:
• To create the opportunity of 320 young migrants to come in contact with local initiatives, NGOs, municipal actors, local authorities, local police and decision makers so that young migrant youth and other actors can engage in structured dialogue and cooperate in future projects.
• To organize a national meeting of migrant and refugee young people and decision and policy makers at the national level.
• Produce outputs (documents, reports, manuals) with outcomes and recommendations from migrant young people to be shared with similar initiatives, local, national and international authorities to be used for future work, policy recommendation and research.
Through our previous projects we have gathered information about the concerns of migrant youth, especially new arriving refugees. The concerns mainly revolve around, access to decent housing, access to health care systems, access to training and education, access to decent jobs and entrepreneurship support. This project through structured dialogue with decision makers facilitates the achievement of the above stated demands and wishes from young migrants.
The Project is co-financed by the ERASMUS Plus program of the European Commission.
