EPALE discussion: Learning to live together

As part of our May focus, EPALE is organising a written discussion on the role and challenges of migrant education in helping migrants to integrate in their host country, and how adult learning can foster tolerance and cultural understanding.
The discussion will take place on this page on 11 June from 10:00 CEST to 16:00 CEST and will be moderated by EPALE Thematic Coordinator and EAEA Secretary-General Gina Ebner. Don’t miss the opportunity to share your views and experiences with the EPALE community on any of the following topics:
10:00-11:50 CEST Cultural components: How is cultural learning for migrants offered and funded in your country? What does it involve and what are the challenges? How effective are introductory courses? 12:05-13:55 CEST Intercultural learning: How can adult learning bring people together? Where does intercultural learning take place? What are the pitfalls? 14:10-16:00 CEST Xenophobia and anti-migrant sentiments: What can adult education actively do to combat xenophobia and raise civic awareness? |
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Sosyalleşmek İçin Dil Öğrenimi
Digital Inclusion for refugees and asylum seekers
Dear all,
we're happy to share with you some information about the Eu funded Project Digital Welcome (http://digitalwelcome.eu/).
Digital Welcome is a European project, started in October 2017 and funded with support from the European Commission (AMIF), devised by partner organisations from Belgium, Greece, Spain, Italy and Germany and coordinated by ALL DIGITAL, Belgium.
The aim of the Digital Welcome Program is to generate an exchange of best practices between organizations specialized in the digital inclusion of disadvantaged target groups, to develop and pilot (in a two-tier development process) an innovative approach to cultivate social inclusion of third-country nationals in educational and social activities, in cultural life, in the voluntary sector and in digital creation activities.
During the Digital Welcome Program, an innovative methodology for a creative IT course will be developed and tested. The goal is to train young immigrants as digital mentors, who will then be involved as volunteers and will organize computer labs for their peers and other interested users, share their skills and demonstrate their potential for inclusion in the local community.
During the piloting, which will be implemented in each partner’s country by October 2018, 120 young people from third countries aged between 16 and 30 will participate in the program and improve their IT, language and relational skills through creative computer labs.
An integral part of the program is also the production of digital stories, which will give them the opportunity to reflect on the training experience and share it with their peers, to motivate them to participate in educational, social and cultural activities, thus facilitating the process of integration and developing skills and competences necessary for entering the world of work.
The piloting is developed on the basis of peer learning and divided into four modules: digital storytelling, coding, digital journalism and soft skills and employability awareness.
Thank you everyone! (you can still continue!)
Dear all,
Thank you so much for the excellent discussion! We apologize again for the postponement of the discussion. Due to technical difficulties just before the original date, most people couldn’t access or post on the site. We therefore decided to move the discussion to a new date so that everyone would be able to participate.
Nevertheless, we hope that you’ve found the contributions enriching – I certainly have! If you’ve missed (parts of) the discussion, then you can still go ahead and post, the site will still be open for comments.
Thank you very much, Gina,
Just 3 quick thoughts
Hi Gina,
A stimulating exchange today. Three thoughts it has prompted in me have been:
We need to counter mis-understandings about cultural stereotypes – but cultures are complex and in a word of limited characters on twitter etc we probably need to practice being short, pithy and factual!
- Adult education’s part of this needs the local practical actions but does it need to be part of lifelong learning as a whole to be 100% effective
- Local actions need to be unintimidating and possibly embrace many cultures at the same time. I guess this is where simple, common activities between communities can be very effective …?
Andrew, EPALE Thematic Coordinator
Thanks for bringing in
Even the English struggle to negotiate the class signposts!
Building capacity of diverse communities
I'm adding your website
any course
Talk English
We must first strengthen european cohesion !
Agreed!
Dear Gina and Colleagues
Many issues for migrants learning
Fighting xenophobia - what can we do?
First: self-awareness
What can we do? Fairness
Gina, thanks for the tips, they are certainly very much needed and applicable.
What I would recommend - when we speak about the discussion about anti-immigrant tempers - is fairness. Why fairness?
Well, so far, we have been observing two sides in the discussion (and also the information campaign). One side with arguments ranging from scepticism to xenophobia and the other side trying to counter the hysteria with approaches ranging from naivity to sophisticated arguments, often right in their perspective, but with little impact on the target audience from the previous group. Thus, we have too often witnessed a debate where emotions – rather than arguments – played the key role and there has usually been very little chance any of the group changed their strong convictions. Mostly, it was an example of affirmative behavior on both sides where arguments could not get through the wall…
Only at certain moments, the wall could be broken. And some of the circumstances of those cases were very peculiar, indeed. One example of what happened in my country, the Czech Republic: a famous Czech pop-star (I will not name him), known for his anti-immigrant and nationalistic views published a photograph on social media with him standing in a circle with his Afghan Muslim friends and shaking hands. He also wrote that these are among his dearest friends and that he will support them. The outcome? What the liberal media and information campaign could not achieve when targeting the skeptical-to-xenophobic part of the Czech society (which is a large majority of the population here), he could do it within seconds. Tens of thousands of people, largely from the target group, reacted to this. Many blamed him for treason. Others doubted. And some have changed their approaches, at least partly. Well, it came from a very unexpected source for sure.
What we need is fairness in discussion. We need to openly address the fears and risks (because there are always risks and threats). In educating, we need to talk the pluses and minuses. And to be humble. If you start the debate with possible risks and threats, rather than repeating only the positives, you have an advantage and you can start bringing down the wall.
Hope it not spoil the party J
Martin
... and to be specific, I
Nevertheless .....
This is a good question. Well
You're absolutely right and
No, you're not spoiling the
Another break, then fighting xenophobia!
Dissemination of Education via Interactive Technology
This is intriguing! Do you
introductory courses
testing the course
How effective are introductory courses?
The effectiveness of these introductory cultural learning courses are affected by the fact that no translators accompany the teachers in their courses. The teachers initially teach in French or English, depending on which language is understood most by the pupils of that class. Often with the help of one of the students, together with the teacher they translate the essence of the course from English or French into their native languages.
During the 120-hour French lessons, some cultural facts are explained: famous Luxembourgish people, Luxembourgish monuments, Luxembourgish traditional food…
Nevertheless, as the migrants usually only achieve the level A1.1, their understanding of what is taught remains quite low.
In the French courses I taught, I explained the behavior of shaking hands, the French/Belgian/Luxembourgish habit of “faire la bise”, the difference between “tu” and “vous”, arriving on time for the course… All this I have included in “cultural education” within teaching the French language. (Françoise Chotro)
introductory courses
It's just the headlines that
Pitfalls?
talk with migrants
Normal
Project, understanding and sustainability
Working with migrants in Lithuania will be a real challenge for adult educators. We understood this during the training course in Italy (Erasmus+ mobility project).
What was the effect of the training?
We have got a deeper understanding of the very essence of migration. We have developed a completely different "portrait" of a migrant (refugee, asylum seeker) than we had until now: there are not a migrant in general. Every migrant is an individual person, who needs to work individually. We now believe that, even if we have intercultural work experience, mostly it will be not sufficient for the work with the people with migratory biography, especially if we meet the people of "distant" cultures.
We also realized that the goal of adult educators is to prepare the whole society to meet the people of different cultures.
Living together is not enough to teach a migrant Lithuanian language and history. Integration is unfinished process and the role of the community in it is extremely important.
The sustainability of the project is to transfer the acquired perceptions to Lithuanian adult educators.
For this purpose we prepare the material "To meet a person, not a culture", where we share our insights and experiences from mobility visit.
Thank you so much! This is
Blog posts on Migrant Education
- Cultural learning - http://bit.ly/2JgW50l
- Supporting highly skilled migrants - http://bit.ly/2sjvvdA
- Barriers for integration - http://bit.ly/2s8ly1H
- ESOL Learning - http://bit.ly/2ruD7JC
thanks Louise
Psycological support for refugees and asylum seekers
sustainability
Excellent point! I'm
Adult education and intercultural learning
adult learning
Short break - then intercultural learning
Show Racism the Red Card cause
Hello Everyone, I am Ronnad Baot Murphy from NSS Ireland. In advance of this afternoon's discussion on xenophobia and anti-migrant
sentiments, I am sharing an example of a cause which aims to combat
xenophobia and to raise civic awareness: Show Racism the Red Card
– an anti-racist charity now present in Ireland, the UK, Germany, Norway,
Sweden, Finland and Denmark. The charity produces anti-racist educational
resources which help to tackle racism. Their resources include videos,
educational packs, factsheets, downloadable interactive resources, and online
training modules, which are all used to tackle racism. They develop programmes
which can impact to tackle racism and promote integration.
The situation in the Czech Republic