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Description
The project focuses on young people with a migration background and aims to create opportunities for them to take an active role in promoting change in areas where they encounter disadvantage and discrimination with a specific focus on the area of secondary education, where this group is confronted with systemic barriers in the form of unequal opportunities, a lack of support and a lack of appropriate ways to voice their concerns and defend their interests. The primary target group are young people with a migration background, from whom an action group of around eight young people will be set up and then systematically supported through workshops and training in the process of reflecting and identifying issues that they face and feel passionate about. The action group will then explore and design possible solutions and take action in staging appropriate interventions aimed at bringing about the desired changes. In the last stage of the project, the results of this process will be presented to the public in the form of a campaign on social media and a range of public events as well as the creation of a handbook describing the experiences of the project and formulating recommendations for other young people to be inspired to take action. All the activities in the project are designed to be conducted according to participatory principles, which is an area in which the employees of the organization will be trained and will then translate their learnings into internal materials that will inform the processes of the organisation going forward.
Summary of project results
The project focused on empowering and activating young people with migration experience or different roots in advocating for change in areas where they experience disadvantage. Particularly in secondary education where they face systemic barriers in the form of unequal opportunities, lack of support and lack of appropriate ways to voice their concerns and advocate for their interests. The primary target group was young people with personal or family experience of migration, from whom an action group was formed and supported in the process of reflecting on and identifying the issues they face and are concerned about.
The project implemented an information campaign in which we gave a voice to young multilingual people for whom the campaign’s topics are directly relevant, because we wanted to make sure that they are not talked about without them. The main themes of the campaign, which are 1. the need for support in Czech 2. well-being and 3. the invisible needs of multilingual pupils, students and teachers, were defined on the basis of the action group participants’ own experiences and from research reports from picnics held during the summer as part of participatory action research in which both young multilingual people and teachers took part. The aim was to raise awareness that multilingual pupils and their teachers have invisible needs and therefore adequate support is needed not only with regard to the teaching of Czech but also to the well-being of both groups, so that they all feel more heard, welcomed, supported and their potential developed in schools.
The project gave young people the opportunity to reflect, speak publicly and reflect on possible solutions to situations they face during their studies in which they are disadvantaged by their migration experience and lack of knowledge of the language of instruction.
1) Young people with migration experience have been empowered in raising visibility and self-advocacy on issues that concern them. The members of the action group explored together situations that they and other young people encounter in the course of their studies, in which their migration experience or lack of knowledge of the language of instruction puts them at a disadvantage, and proposed possible solutions to them. They were empowered over a period of several months and carried out participatory action research in the form of research picnics with multilingual pupils and their teachers. Members were also supported through training, workshops and consultations with experts.
2) We raised awareness among the general and expert community about the project topics through an information campaign with the slogan "Our Voice is Heard. Attention. Support. Potential." The campaign consists of professional video spots with protagonist Jehor, Vee and teacher Jana, 12 accompanying videos and 4 public events (round table with members of parliament and senators, panel discussion at the high school, press conference and final picnic event.
3) The capacity of the organisation was also strengthened. META staff were supported in developing a communication strategy, advocacy activities with CS and CS empowerment and participation.
The most significant impact of the project was on the action group of young people with migration experience who, thanks to their involvement in the project, gained the opportunity to reflect intensively on their situation. Thanks to the workshops and sharing with others in the empowerment part, they were able to discover both the external barriers to developing their own potential (in school, in the education system, in the preparation of teachers), but also the internal ones, when they reflected on what they themselves believed (that they were not eligible for support, that they could not reach out). In this part, they also experienced a sense of acceptance and belonging and, often for the very first time, a safe environment for self-sharing. All of this had a huge empowering effect on the young people. In PAR they had developed their own competencies and had also become ''experts and researchers'', which was also empowering for most of them. Through the making of the picnics, everyone was able to participate according to their abilities and capabilities. The creation and implementation of the campaign was also empowering for all. They were given the opportunity to work on the campaign focus and scripts, the visuals and tone of the spots, and became content creators themselves (their own videos). This developed sensitivity to the message (language, visuals, influence of mood, portrayal of characters/targets, etc.), practical skills (scripting, shooting, editing), as well as presentation skills. Feedback showed that they were also strengthened in their own environment (they were able to speak up better at school or among peers, for example, but also to appreciate the good intention of the teacher).
The impact inside the organisation was mainly in the fact that we tried empowerment and participatory involvement of this target group and found that it worked. Not only inthe project, but we had the opportunity to involve young people in our other activities. The participatory design of the campaign was a valuable experience, as were the outputs and impacts. The campaign delivery, the substance and the visual quality of the spots were very positively evaluated by the target groups and really "worked". The focus and design of the events had interesting feedback and impacts on the different target groups, including the sharing of experiences at the final event, which also had an activating character.