Migration is one of the major social, economic and political issues of the contemporary societies and is challenge both for migrants and for the hosting communities. Newcomers are people who were proud yesterday of their homes, position in a society, very often they are well educated, but they are refugees, migrants or asylum-seekers now. We see that youth organizations and young people can be the key problem-solvers through their daily work to find and integrate newcomers. If organizations are not inclusive, the other layers of society can easily exclude all “newcomers” as well. In addition, the awareness level on the possibilities and ways of social help is low.

Under the word “newcomer” we understand not only all the people on the move, but who have yet to complete the legal process of claiming asylum. We include also people fleeing war-torn countries, who are likely to be granted refugee status, as well as people who are seeking jobs and better lives. Besides, we include the people who are seeking better social life, higher education, etc. As a result, we agreed on the word NEWCOMERs to describe all above-mentioned people. To be considered a newcomer, a person should have cultural and mentality differences from the society where he or she newly arrived.

We understand the importance of solving the situation through NGOs and youth organizations to work with newcomers, help them with their problems in the host country. Here we consider the newcomer’s entrance, administrative relations with governmental, local authorities, police and legal bodies as the first stop. After this stage, at the SECOND STOP taking into account the cultural differences, the newcomer can get isolated from the society if there is no any youth work for inclusion. The third stop is the newcomers’ final “integration” and becoming citizen. Reaching to this stage a newcomer can remain not integrated into the host society and not become an active citizen.

The main aim of the project:

To equip young people with tools which increase the competences to find, direct and integrate young newcomers.
The objectives of the project:

To provide Youth organizations with a user-friendly handbook with tools, materials, cartoons, infographics, resources, which will increase capacity to work on finding migrants’, refugees’ and newcomers’ and make their adaptation easier by giving social assistance, work on social inclusion and transition from a newcomer to a full member of the society.
To provide 30 youth workers from 10 countries with appropriate capacities, to focus on the role of youth organizations to make newcomers’ “SECOND STOP” (inclusion into youth work) smooth and harmonious to the host society.
To increase the number of newcomers in each of youth organization during next 6 months to encourage and develop intercultural learning, increase the exchange of experience between old and new newcomers thus creating peaceful community.
To promote the active civic engagement of young newcomers by providing public mediums for dialogue and cultural expression, as well as important resources to make a positive impact within their communities at large.
To develop materials for handbook, mainly aimed to support for inclusive youth work and youth organization
The training course aims to bring participants who are youth workers, activists, youth leaders, members of WostAYN network and/or are from partner youth organizations from across Europe (especially from communities having NEWCOMERS). During the selection big importance will be given to the youth workers dealing with NEWCOMERs /migrants, refugees, asylum-seekers, international students, resettles/

Infopack:

Training course: Second Stop for Effective Inclusion – Armenia – abroadship.org

Click to access Call-for-Participants.-2nd-Stop.pdf