Migrempower: Kick-off in Madrid about our new migrants employability project

Nowadays, migration and asylum seekers represent a great challenge for the whole Europe. Migrants’ integration and refugees’ flow have become a topic of a constant debate across Europe. The new debate is now how to promote integration approaches, policies, theory and practices. Civil coexistence and mutual respect have to be built through educational and welfare interventions also in the labour field. Integration processes often result in xenophobic attitudes. According to this, learning has become the only way of migrants to defend themselves against prejudices and stereotypes.

The MIGREMPOWER project contributes to the fight against discrimination towards migrants and/or refugees by asking for the recognition of their citizenship rights; promoting the coexistence among society and migrants and/or refugees’ communities; considering educational and training as indispensable elements for the promotion of social cohesion and integration processes.

The 8 EU countries (Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Austria and France) involved in this project, will achieve the project objectives by carrying out the study on policies and good practices addressed to migrants and refugees’ social and labour integration, in order to analyse what has been already implemented and how to learn from past experiences; developing methodological and intervention tools and didactic materials for promoting migrants and refugees’ social and labour situation; testing the intervention tools, guidelines and training materials.

Kick Off meeting in Madrid 

The kick-off meeting of the MigrEmpower project was successfully held in Spain on the 11th-12th December 2017. The meeting discussed the target group of the project, studies on policies and good practices addressed to migrants and refugees’ social and labor integration, presentation of the methodology for IO2 and the orientation and counselling handbook for migrants and refugees’ self-evaluation of competences, as well as their training package, guidelines, and how to disseminate the project.

Partners from 8 EU organisations, coming from Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Germany, Austria and France, were gathered to establish a common vision and understanding on the project’s development, as well as to discuss about the upcoming Intellectual Outputs. In addition, the consortium of partners agreed on certain key roles and responsibilities, and decided on the focus of the MigrEmpower project and the next deadlines to be met. The leader partner, Red2Red, has clarified all the aspects of the project management and contributed in answering all queries in relation to the project’s implementation. All partners are now preparing their national report on the “Study on policies and good practices addressed to migrants and refugees’ social and labour integration”. The next meeting is foreseen to take place in Germany (Leipzig) on the 20th and 21st March 2018.

Looking forward to the next steps, their first skype conference call will take place early in the New Year, January 16th. The second project meeting will take place this upcoming March from the 20th to the 21st in Leipzig, Germany and they will continue to work on the project.