Within the INCLUDATE* (Educating for Inclusion) project, ALDA organised a PanEU International Conference to make partners share their activities and findings during the first year of its implementation. INCLUDATE aims to include people with a migrant background to share their experiences throughout the storytelling and to imagine together possible solutions to shared issues. 

ALDA works with members and partners to develop projects supporting its mission to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda; in this specific case, the INCLUDATE project tries to fulfil SDG 4, which aims “to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. "

During the PanEu Conference, every partner presented the result of the activities they implemented:

• “Berlin-Mitte: great location but few happy places” – Polnischer Sozialrat e.V.
• “I did not understand how to function in the city and what formal steps should I take after moving”: experience of migrants’ living in Gdynia – MOPS
• “This is our country too”: life in Palermo through the eyes of migrants – Per Esempio Onlus 
• “On its best day Copenhagen is heaven, and on its worst I feel like all its doors are closing on me” A look into the lives of people of migrant backgrounds living in Copenhagen. – Crossing Borders.

The activities’ outcomes were pretty much similar, even though the partners are located in 6 different European countries. 

During the second part of the meeting, the discussion focused on three different topics: Housing, Services and Education. The workshops were carried out by organisations’ representatives and participants discussed different issues and questions, sharing their experience related to Housing/Education/Services taken from their  personal or professional life. 

The results from the three workshops were similar and it came out that the biggest issue migrants face in their everyday life is linked to the language.

Accordingly, the language barrier shows its negative effects in every field: at school, in accessing the health system, in finding a job that they are specialised to carry out. Other problems related to the job market concern the impossibility to recognise migrants’ diplomas or specialisation certificates acquired in their home country.

Among ALDA’s values, inclusion and integration are key: with a specific Thematic Hub on Gender, Inclusion, and Human Rights the work on these topics through EU-funded projects increases everyday. Inclusion of migrants, specially marginalised ones, is at the heart of the INCLUDATE project, and this Conference represented another opportunity for ALDA to work on this topic.

ALDA looks forward to taking part in last year’s project development and training with partner organisations. 

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*INCLUDATE is a project developed in the framework of the Erasmus+ Programme, and its actions are planned to actively further the Erasmus Strategy for Inclusion and Diversity.