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Description
Białystok is a popular destination for foreign immigrants from the east, a large portion of whom are women, and who come as whole families or alone. Every day, these women work and take care of children and the home. As they have to deal with their problems on their own, they often do not attempt to gain new professional qualifications or adapt their current skills to suit Polish conditions, even if they were successful at doing so in their home country. There is a shortage of female leaders among the immigrants living in Białystok who can act to bring about broad adaptation and integration with the local community and act as a voice for that group. The project aims to empower, activate, and enable the female immigrant community from the east living in Białystok to become self-reliant. Under the project, we will provide Polish lessons, career and education advice, and psychological counselling, and hold four integration events. We will set up the Leader Academy for Women (Akademia Liderek), which is workshops, mentoring, meetings with female immigrants who have achieved success, and study tours. It will provide training for twelve female immigrants to act as self-advocates and community activators. An Immigrant Women Club (Klub Kobiet Imigrantek) will be set up, in which women leaders will conduct self-help, advocacy, and training/counselling measures. As part of an initiative incubator, female immigrants will hold six events to support their own community. The measures under the project will benefit a minimum of 129 women, 12 of whom will be trained to act as self-advocates representing their community. The club will integrate the women immigrant community and provide a sphere to be active and develop, and for discussion of their needs, as well as self-help and support.
Summary of project results
The project addresses the problem of social exclusion of migrants from the East living in Bialystok and surrounding areas. A significant proportion of them are women supporting their families, often working hard, many hours a day and below their qualifications, with no chance to take care of their own well-being or self-development. Among the biggest barriers to integration are the language barrier (limiting access to information or the labour market), the administrative-legal barrier (making it difficult to deal with official matters), the socio-cultural barrier (leading to isolation). Among migrant women living in Bialystok, there is a lack of female leaders and self-advocates who would act for their community and be its voice. As part of the project, migrant women living in Bialystok took part in a Polish language course, received vocational and educational counselling and psychological counselling. Several different open integration events were also organised. A total of 441 women benefited from these activities, to varying degrees. In addition, 16 women took part in the Leadership Academy programme, which consisted of a series of workshops on self-advocacy, individual mentoring, meetings with inspirational migrant women and study visits to local social action groups. An Immigrant Women''s Club was also established, where female leaders carried out self-help and integration activities for other migrant women from the region and their families. Thanks to the project, migrant women from across the eastern border living in and around Bialystok were empowered, became more open, active and independent, and the whole community became integrated. They have received support that has greatly reduced barriers to integration and has had a positive impact on their well-being. The club now has a membership of around 600 people. In turn, 16 participants of the Academy have improved their leadership and self-advocacy competences and gained experience of implementing their own projects.
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