The project ‘ALFIRK – Collaborative Networks for Migrant Parent Empowerment’ addresses the importance of including parents, and in particular migrant parents in school and educational processes of their children in order to tackle the high occurrence of early school leaving (ESL) and disparities in learning outcomes of migrant youth in European school systems. This project sought to address the many barriers to increased empowerment of migrant parents by developing practical tools for functioning migrant parent involvement and networking in six countries. ALFIRK was initiated by the SIRIUS Network – Policy Network on Migrant Education with the support of the European Commission through the Erasmus+ Program and builds up on the SIRIUS (2014) ‘Agenda on Migrant Education’.Migrant parents are often found to participate less in the school processes and the education of their children while at the same time many migrant students lag behind in educational achievements. Parental involvement in school and education matters of their children carries the potential to contribute to enhanced educational performance. Furthermore, parents with a migrant background are often not as well connected to local structures and information as parents without a migrant background. Strengthening parental networking and their inclusion in local structures carries the potential to further enhance their involvement in the education of their children.Before this background, ALFIRK addresses barriers in increased parental empowerment in education processes, particularly among migrant parents, by:•Analyzing patterns of migrant parental involvement, parental networking, and barriers in parental involvement and empowerment at case study schools in six EU countries;•Identifying practical tools and good practices for migrant parental involvement and empowerment in order to enable schools to improve their strategies for migrant parental involvement;•Developing online tools to enable migrant parents to easily access information about school and education systems in EU countries and to network and exchange information among each others.This is implemented through three outputs:1) A qualitative study on the experiences of Migrant Parents.2) A toolkit for good practices in migrant parental involvement in education3) A migrant parent empowerment collaborative platform.In the long term, ALFIRK aims to empower migrant parents at three levels: •The family level, which reflects parents’ ability to manage issues of the family within the social context, •The service system level, which reflects the degree to which parents are able to effectively work with the school system, •The community/political level, which reflects parents’ advocacy for improved services for migrant youth in general.The collaborative approach is reflected in the project name “ALFIRK,” which means “the flock.” The project ran from September 2015 to August 2018; it was coordinated by the european forum for migration studies – efms (Germany): The partners were Multi Kulti Collective (Bulgaria), Risbo (the Netherlands), Leeds Beckett University (United Kingdom), Economic and Social Research Institute (Ireland), Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (Spain), and Migration Policy Group (Belgium).

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Context and ObjectivesThe central topic of the Erasmus+ strategic partnership project ''Exchange of knowledge and good practice to enhance the education of refugee and asylum seeking youth'' (hereafter referred to as RefuEdu) is refugee education.The drastic rise in asylum applicants in recent years has placed increased pressure on EU Member States to develop strategies for effectively integrating newly arrived migrants into society. A record number of over 1.2 million first time asylum seekers registered in 2015 (Eurostat, 2015). Almost 30% of those were children. The provision of equal educational chances remains a challenge in the educational contexts of EU Member States with young people with a migrant background being found at a particular disadvantage. Research has shown that education is one of the most important paths to the structural integration of refugees and young asylum seekers (RAS). Currently there is insufficient understanding of the challenges that these youth face and inadequate transnational sharing of knowledge regarding potential solutions. The objectives of the RefuEdu project are to facilitate the exchange of experience and good practice in refugee education among different groups of stakeholders and among different countries and to generate mutual learning effects in refugee education. Also, to increase the ability of stakeholders to apply functioning methods and strategies for the support of the education of refugee and asylum seeking youth across European countries and promote multi-stakeholder and transnational cooperation in the education of refugee and asylum seeking youth. Thereby, the main goal of the project is to enhance the education of refugee and asylum seeking youth in Europe.Number and profile of participating organisations
The project group consists out of nine organizations from seven European countries. Profiles are universities, NGO’s, research institutes and expertise centers all active in the fields of migration and integration.Description of the main activities
We organized 3 transnational learning events (LTT) where stakeholders (school staff, decision makers, volunteers, social workers) exchanged good practices and effective policies in refugee education in their countries. Also, we produced 1 Intellectual Output: 1) A policy and practice handbook on refugee and asylum seeker youth' education with indicators to track the adoption and implementation of the recommendations for practitioners and policy makers dealing with the education of refugees and asylum seeking youth in policy and practice. In addition, we had 4 Transnational Partner meetings.Results and impact attained
- In total, 100 project participants from different groups of stakeholders and from 7 different EU countries have a raised awareness on experience and good practices as well as effective policies on the education of refugee and asylum seeking youth (RAS) in Europe. - Project participants have gained a greater understanding and knowledge of the barriers and potential solutions for the education of refugees and asylum seeking youth. - Increased opportunity for education stakeholders to build and strengthen network at both national and EU level. Thereby, increasing multi-stakeholder and transnational cooperation in the education of refugee and asylum seeking youth.
-Increased ability of education stakeholders for actual implementation of functioning methods and strategies for the support of the education of refugee and asylum seeking youth across European countries.
- The project generated mutual learning effects in refugee education through the exchange of knowledge between different stakeholders and sharing the project outcomes with a wider audience.The overall impact of the project is increased and improved ability of stakeholders to deal with the particular situation RAS are faced with, respond to their needs and support them in the development of their potentials. Also, increased and improved ability of policy makers to respond to the particular situation refugee and asylum seeking youth are faced with through the formulation of policies which abandon barriers and foster the fast integration of this group into European education systems. At the European level the projects increase and improve networking and cooperation among education stakeholders from different EU countries, increased awareness on the EU level about barriers in refugee and asylum seeking youth' education and potentials to eliminate these barriers (including the possibility to plan steps for policy responses based on the findings and recommendations). Longer-term benefitsThe main long-­term intended benefit of this project is the provision of equal and equitable education for refugee and asylum seeking youth in the participating countries and other EU countries.

Integration Without Borders is a project which brings more light in the relations between minorities and majorities in Europe. The social work is of crucial importance in the field of integration of minorities, in the field of reconciliation in society. Only competent social worker can be able to reach good results. Competence is the key word of this project which aims to define competencies of social worker and train young social workers in new actual competencies.The main competencies of the project, which were selected on the pre­analysis are: intercultural understanding, management of diversities, social entrepreneurship and project development. In the cooperation of 9 partners from 8 countries who has long time experience with work with migrants and minorities in Europe we analyzed, compared, evaluated, mapped the situation, exchanged good practice from the field and organized two pilots trainings.As a final product of the project we are offering training material (a book) which describes the way how to reach these competencies. The book is including description of the situation in 8 European countries and training material to improve each competence. The book could help social workers, volunteer in social work, teachers of social work or also universities that have social work programs to implement these competences in life in their masters curricula.

The proposal’s central concept is CultureLabs, an open and evolving ICT-empowered infrastructure which comprises a rich variety of resources including guidelines, methodologies, digital tools, existing community engagement projects, as well as novel ideas and approaches that can facilitate social innovation in culture. The infrastructure is addressed to both institutional stakeholders and community members to make use of existing shared, and in many cases commonly created, resources, according to their missions and needs. Different resources, the “ingredients”, can be combined in various ways to form a “recipe” that describes how to carry out a participatory project to address the needs of a specific target audience. The primary focus will be on approaches that build positive awareness about communities’ own heritage and memories, and engage their members as bearers and producers of culture. CultureLabs’ case studies focus on different immigrants communities (e.g. refugees, second generation immigrants, female immigrants etc). CultureLabs toolkits and infrastructure are reusable and extensible, and its ingredients can be easily combined and adjusted to meet the needs of different stakeholders and target groups. At least 20 concrete recipes will be designed through the collaboration between different stakeholders, including museums, civil organisations, and policy makers. Four of these recipes will be implemented and evaluated as pilots in three different countries. Research outcomes and the empirical evidence gained from the project’s activities, including the recipes’ design and implementation, will be consolidated into general-purpose methodological guidelines and best practices that can be adopted by any stakeholder who wishes to organise participatory approaches to CH with a social impact.