Immigrants and Refugees: Lifting barriers to inclusion through Non-Formal Education

The course aims to support participants (teachers, educators, youth mentors, VET trainers) to deal with learners with a refugee background, and lack often the language skills or suffer from war traumas that become a barrier to their full integration to their “new” home. Educators confronted with such issues have to be better prepared to know how to deal with these learners to reduce the current high drop out from education. Thus, each educator must be supported and trained about refugee’s rights, overcoming language barriers, mental health, etc. so that they are able to engage them in building connections, foster emotional skills, develop social skills and dealing with discrimination in everyday life. The main theme of the training will be focused on raising awareness of the realities, possibilities and new tools for building a more inclusive society, away from marginalisation and against social exclusion.
Objectives:
The participants to:
• Gain understanding of the reasons why people may leave their homes, and that although the historical contexts will be different, the reasons can be similar
• connect reasons for immigrating to the human rights described in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
• Gain a better understanding of the refugee crisis and what it means to be a refugee.
• Consider the importance of “humanizing” those who otherwise seem distant and different from us.
• Recognize the power of taking a “small step” when faced with a problem that seems too large to tackle.

Day 1:
Welcoming of participants
Course outline
Ice-breaking activities
Introduction - Immigrants and Refugees: Lifting barriers to inclusion

Day 2:
Why Immigrate?
Deciding to Immigrate: A History
Immigrating and human rights
Waiting in Line Game
Spot the Myths
A History of Xenophobia

DAY 3:
Refugee Role Play
Youth, Identity, and Immigration
Culture and Identity
How to make a difference for refugees?
Social integration, social inclusion and active citizenship

DAY 4:
Emotional support for immigrants and refugees
Balance between self-awareness, empathy and objective perspective
Demonstrating kindness and compassion to child refugees
Effective goal setting
Motivation for working with marginalised youth groups

DAY 5:
Final activities
Evaluation of the course
Diploma awarding