Description
The "Multicolor Hug" project aims to provide social welfare services to immigrant children and their families. More specifically this project will provide education to children and parents, Greek language courses, music classes, creative activities and artistic expression courses, such as theatrical play, family counseling, psychological, legal and medical support. Through a combination of the aforementioned actions, NGO CIVIS PLUS aims to create a multidimensional project of social welfare support that will empower immigrant children and their families to enter the job market and have access to social welfare in order to facilitate their integration into Greek society.
Summary of project results
The refugee crisis in Greece, brought to the surface the need of long-term planning and an overall policy approach to migration. Most of the existing funded project aim at migrants and their families are fragmented and short-lived, because the after the end of the funding the project stops. The project set out to provide social services to children from third countries aged from 7 to 12 (which either came recently to the country or are second generation immigrants). The project supported a total of more than 50 families, and specifically 65 children and 47 parents. The project, with the invaluable help of our volunteers, offered the benefited children 125 hours of supplementary teaching, 138 hours of creative activities and 20 hours of English courses. In the context of this project and with the financial support of the Iaso Childrens’ Hospital 41 benefited children received healthcare services and support while 3 culturally educative excursions were organized for the children. The project supported the benefited parents by realizing 132 hours of Greek lessons and 111 hours of psycho-social support and offered legal counseling on issues of their concern with the form of legal presentations. The benefited children improved their school performance and cultivated their social aptitudes, which facilitated their inclusion in the school environment and -in the long term- in the Greek society. The benefited parents strengthened their linguistic abilities and therefore became more capable of resolving practical everyday issues, helping their children with their schoolwork, facilitate their lives and become aware of their rights and the ways through which they can claim them. All of this contributed to the creation of a solid foundation on which they will participate from an equal stance to the social life of the country and which will support their smooth inclusion. Through this project valuable teaching material was produced as well as new ways of organizing it and new teaching methods based on the needs of the benefited group as well as monitoring and evaluation tools which enabled a well-targeted providing of services. The outcome from exploring the needs of this vulnerable group, acquiring technical expertise and the precious experience from implementing this project can be used from other bodies providing social services to contribute towards the effective decrease of social inequalities and exclusion that immigrant families’ face.
Summary of bilateral results