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Transformers - Migrants' Transition to Participation
Start date: May 1, 2015, End date: Nov 1, 2015 PROJECT  FINISHED 

'Transformers – Migrants’ Transition to Participation’ is an eight days training course organized in Mestia, Georgia for youth workers aged 21-35, working with youth with migration background (refugees, minorities, work migrants, IDPs, international volunteers). Its main aim is to develop cohesive methodology for integration of socially excluded migrants by identifying and exploring all the issues concerning migrants and transforming them into competences necessary for active participation in civil society and raising opportunities for their employability. Main goals of the training is to enable youth workers to: • explore and understand the entire process that leads to social exclusion of people with migrating background; • identify the competences that young people can develop in connection with migration and mobility; • break the stereotype of a migrant as a potential ‘job-stealer’ and person useless for community; • develop methods of youth work that can contribute to increasing professional competences of migrants on the job market; • develop methods of combating the ‘reverse-exclusion’ process (migrants toward society); • share knowledge and good practices of work with youth with migrating background; • develop the understanding of Non-Formal education as an ongoing process. The project is based on the idea that all the conditions surrounding migration and mobility help develop natural competences in young people (i.e. flexibility, ability to create close and stable relationships, entrepreneurship, self-management, openness toward intercultural dialogue, ability to resolve conflicts through dispute, leadership potential) – they only need to be transformed and developed to make beneficiaries aware of their own potential. Thus the training will take a form of a survival camp, where all the participants will have a chance to experience on their own, in a form of a field game, the obstacles that migrants are facing in their everyday lives (i.e. boarder control experienced by refugees, problems with communication, difficulties finding a place to settle in, the ups and downs of living in small, excluded community, language barrier, the necessity of taking care of once maintenance instead of increasing job competences, cultural shock, disorientation, lack of support and reliable information in the country of movement). The game will be accompanied by the series of workshops dedicated to social exclusion, migration process, the EU procedures migration policy, developing natural competences using Informal and Non Formal Education, ‘small steps’ approach, building mutual trust, Peer 2 Peer education, building self-esteem, resolving intercultural conflicts, shaping young leaders. Participants will also have a chance to meet with Internally Displaced People of Georgia. As a result the youth workers will explore the realities of migrants’ life, will open toward intercultural dialogue, break stereotypes and prepare a ‘handbook of good practices’, which will include the methods developed during the training, as well as the results of actions implemented in the countries of participants. With the broader perspective, the project will change the image of a migrant to a person valuable for local communities and will encourage the integration of youth with migration background with their local colleagues. This will lead to inclusion of youth with migration background into local societies, and further – will encourage them to learn languages of the countries of emigration, to explore their culture and will decrease the amount of youngsters coming from minorities leaving schools prematurely. And as a result – like in the popular cartoon ‘Transformers’ – the position of a migrant as an ‘alien’ in the society will be transformed into an important role-model and a part of society.

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