European projects list

Migration and intercultural studies

According to the latest report of Unicef (2017), almost 300 million children aged 2-4 experience physical maltreatment, harsh discipline and other forms of parental maltreatment within their families. In Europe, they are estimated to total about 80 million. The ERICA training programme will address issues of agency non-collaboration, seek locally defined and monitored solutions for these problems, whilst training agencies in state of the art detection and management of child maltreatment within a family. Inter-organisational disconnection and lack of adequate consultation and collaboration between agencies in addressing the needs of children at risk of or subject to violence is a great issue. Also need reliable evidence-based identification tools for preventing maltreatment are needed. The key aim of the project is to prevent and combat violence towards children, defined here as maltreatment, by building the expertise of professionals concerning minors living in families with child maltreatment risk, also in multicultural contexts. In detail: - for professionals to undertake a comprehensive training program to enhance their use of risk assessment tools and their engagement in multiprofessional working practices - to integrate a strategy which involves the civil society in the prevention of child maltreatment - to develop, pilot and evaluate a European training program

3.3. Million people are currently living in the urban area of Nairobi, among which 60,000 are street children and an additional 22,224 underage refugees (approximately 1,600 are unaccompanied minors) living in a volatile and hostile socio-political context and vulnerable to the black market and human trafficking. In spite of the launch of Kenya Vision 2030 and the considerable SDG progresses, education, HIV, socio-economic inequality, poverty and poor institutional capacity continue to undermine Kenya’s potential. Approximately 60% of the population lives in neighbourhoods characterized by a high social and health deterioration. The institutional fragility on protection is alarming. Health, education, access to clean water and sanitation remain top priorities for the Kenyan Government, who aims to achieve social inclusion and the creation of job opportunities for the most marginalized (minors, disabled, women and refugees), in order to create fair and sustainable development. A high level of socio- economic inequality, widespread poverty and weak governance continue to undermine Kenya’s progresses, highlighting the gap in income distribution with adverse effects on social welfare. Eastleigh is a large borough in Nairobi, predominantly populated by Somali, both Kenyan citizens as well as refugees. The latter make-up approximately 26,500 (of which 622 are endangered minors5) who live in isolation, unemployment and exploitation by human traffickers. Mlango Kubwa, neighbouring Eastleigh, is situated in the Starehe sub-county and merges with the large Mathare slum, characterized by overpopulation, inexistent social services, crime, unemployment, unwanted early pregnancies, gender based violence and substance abuse. Its population has been recorded to be 38,374 (of which 14% are under 14 years old), who live in deterioration. Minors are particularly vulnerable, lacking significant family support they become exposed to the dangers of a life on the streets (crime, drugs, STDs).

The main objective of the project is to contribute to the prevention of child trafficking mainly through training of stakeholders coming into contact with potential child victims on one hand and through empowerment of minors at risk on the other, so as to make them aware of risks and help them protecting themselves. The secondary objective is to assess our prevention strategy and toolkits, complementing existing experiences, increasing knowledge on vulnerable profiles and introducing innovative data collection methodologies which rely on the protagonism of service providers encouraging the constitution of cooperative anti-trafficking action plan between different agencies (social, educative, judicial, law enforcement, etc) working in the same field, increasing the prevention potential of the intervention strategies. The project wants to mainstream the main deliverable at European level supporting, this way, also the development of an anti-trafficking European network that includes non governmental social service providers.

MMWD is designed in the realm of the Europe 2020 Strategy to support regional strategy-making for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. Its key assumption is that policy-makers dealing with territorial development are in need of a future-oriented and integrated vision of development, that would help identify key regional and local challenges and translate the targets and objectives of Europe 2020 into territorial policy priorities. To help build such vision MMWD offers a sound and regionalized knowledge base, scenarios with a 2020 horizon that depict the implications of today’s demographic change in local development terms, institutional capacity sessions and roundtables for transnational policy dialogue and cooperation on migration management. The MMWD project aims to fulfil the following goals:

• to improve the analysis and harmonization of the knowledge base on demographic trends and their implications for the prospects of growth and well-being of SEE regions and cities;
• to construct solid demographic forecasts and scenarios to 2020, concerning territorial development trends related to demographic change;
• to strengthen local capacity to undertake evidence-based strategic planning, with migration recognized as a relevant feature for sustainable growth policies;
• to promote and facilitate transnational dialogue among countries and territories that are affected by current demographic trends, with a view to identify comparative advantages in transnational cooperation and promote a more effective regulation of migration flows;
• to disseminate the outputs of the vision-building process of MMWD to an audience of policy makers, practitioners, experts and local communities.

The main goal of the project is to define an effective multidimensional intervention programme aimed at improving the integration of unaccompanied foreign minors, ensuring their needs and interests, strengthening both their individual social networks and new form of cooperation within and between services and stakeholders. Unaccompanied minors is a target at high risk of social exclusion and with specific needs which must be regularly reviewed (with a precise attention also to those minors requiring special care, protection or treatment for their physical or mental health). The primary purposes of the project are:

• to elaborate a knowledge-based intervention model to improve helpful practices both of on-going special needs assessment (in order to elaborate coherent life-project for each minors) and common family tracing procedures (in order to map familiar relationships as possible care resources to sustain positive paths and wellbeing and/or to promote family reunification);
• to provide minors with appropriate opportunities of training and education, social and leisure activities, participation in cultural life of the context where they live, increasing the opportunities of interaction with their peers and adults of the host society, including with those belonging to the same national or cultural group in order to provide occasions for the minors to live their own culture, ensuring the respect for diversity together with the promotion of the integration in the collective life
• to build a permanent transnational cooperation within professionals, stakeholders, social workers and all other figures who work with unaccompanied foreign minors to define international measures, to share positive practices concerning the integration of unaccompanied foreign minors.

ESCAPE project aims to foster a transnational knowledge exchange on peer and street violence evidence-based contrast and prevention practices addressed to street living/working children-adolescent with migration background and or belonging to minorities. The project aims also to define an East-West platform development between mainly "new" and "old" EU Member States to foster transnational strategies for promoting effective programmes to prevent and contrast street and peer violence and risk behaviour related to harmfull lifestyles.

According to Lisbon objectives in education and training and under the assumption of the important role that schools have for integration (as stressed in EU CBP for immigrant integration policy), considered that valorisation of human capital is a primary asset not only for social integration issues, but also for a knowledge-based competitiveness benefit, in particular in time of economic downturn and labour market difficulties, the proposal, focusing on secondary education (11-18 years old students) aims to improve comparative knowledge on good practises of assessments and recognition of knowledge, skills and competences of migrant students entering and exiting the education system, in order to adapt teaching skills, to avoid the placement of migrant children in lower than their age-appropriate grades and to support new forms of knowledge certification useful for job research and mobility. The project wants also to promote an effective mutual exchange at translocal level between educational staff to share experiences and to identify common criteria to disseminate good practices in assessing and recognizing of migrant students competences and to improve equity and wellbeing in education, involving also migrant families.

The main issue of the project is sharing international good practices in decentralized management of immigration and in the implementation of public regional services of Lombardia (IT) and Wallonia (BE).
Develop an analytic, methodological and institutional frame to improve the management of migration flow in Autonomous Region of Andalusia as foreseen in the article 62 of the statute of autonomy of Andalusia.

This project is aimed at the promotion of life-long learning and the labour integration of victims of discrimination. The main products are: a set of indicators on integration and fight against discrimination on the labour market and within social and health services; transnational comparison among different monitoring systems; case studies; elaboration of a research protocol able to analyse the migratory phenomena; on-line bibliographical archive.

Project on the labour insertion of migrant workers with the development of a set of indicators.