About
Since 2011, millions of Syrians have fled their homes, seeking safety in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and the EU. Over half of the Syrian refugee population are young people who strive to rebuild new lives. Host countries are facing exacerbation of social conflicts and radicalisation of racism and discrimination. The Consortium, composed of CSOs working in Italy, Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, four countries involved in current and past migration routes, is deeply convinced, as a Euro-Mediterranean community, of the necessity to develop a meaningful approach to the looming task of supporting young refugees to rebuild their lives. Responsive Non-Formal Education (NFE) activities offer stability and purpose, provide youth with opportunities to rebuild social capital and re-establish a routine and development of skills for their future.
Objectives
RE-ACT IN aimed and aims to:
- improve the competences of youth workers in promoting social inclusion and building trust and understanding between refugee and host communities through NFE;
- empower youngsters living in marginalised areas, by supporting them to recover from crisis and build happier lives;
- co-design and experiment alternative models of youth participation in public and social life through the means of artistic expression and digital tools;
- enhance cooperation, innovation capacity and internationalisation of CSOs working in the NFE sector.
history
The history of the REACT-IN project can be divided into two main phases:
- a context-based needs analysis focused on assessing the needs and developing innovative NFE methodologies to tackle the issues of social exclusion. This phase brought together civil society organisations and the university of Bologna in a collaboration to produce a theoretical and field research to map the realities of each country and highlight their practices, commonalities and differences using an ethnographic approach.
- a capacity-building phase, focused on engaging and empowering youth workers and marginalised youth by using performing and visual arts as a means of representation. This phase consisted of an initial period of training for trainers and a second period of planning and implementation of activities in each micro context.