During the last two years, Europe and particularly Greece have faced the largest refugee and migrant influx in their recent history. The need to integrate Third County Nationals (TCNs) into society and promote their active participation into the Greek socio-political fabric (i.e. education, sociability, employment and access to health), becomes urgent than ever. The aim of this project is geared toward that direction by creating a platform, whereby consultations between actors of local society and TCNs will take place. Via this platform, both groups will have the chance to exchange opinions, share experiences and practices; establish strong relationships, enable common activities, thus becoming the representative voice into the “Immigrant Integration Councils” which operate as early as 2010 in Greece. The project has chosen the city of Thessaloniki to implement its actions as a large number of Third Country Nationals can be found in Northern Greece and especially in and around the city of Thessaloniki. It is worth mentioning that prior to the establishment of this platform, necessary capacity building activities, such as trainings and workshops targeting TCNs and local stakeholders (frontline practitioners, hospital staff and teachers), will take place as well as dissemination actions, so as to prepare the ground for a fruitful cooperation between all involved stakeholders.
The general objective of the project is to promote the active participation of TCNs in important aspects of local community and societal life. The expected impact of the actions implemented by the project, is to effectively address the ongoing socio-economic inequalities third-country nationals face while living in the host society, in order to reduce the existing disparities between locals and migrant populations and contribute to the making of an inclusive and cohesive society.
The creation of cooperation networks at the local community-level, where collaboration and reciprocity between the involved stakeholders will be accomplished, will play a pivotal role first in ensuring a smooth integration process, attaining the long-term impact of the actions undertaken.
Specifically, the LION project will meet the following operational objectives:
- Develop the preconditions for mutual understanding and trust and form the basis for shared responsibilities through the implementation of a series of workshops and trainings;
- Build common activities of TCNs and members of local community in order to strengthen active participation of TCNs into aspects of local society and, therefore, to increase positive attitudes;
- Establish participatory culture of dialogue between TCNs and local community via the establishment of a physical platform which will be composed by the following core thematic:
- Promoting integration through healthcare
- Promoting integration through meeting migrants’ social care needs
- Fostering migrants’ participation in formal education
- Employment as a prerequisite for integration
- Promoting integration through intercultural coexistence
- Human Rights & Legal aspects of migration
Overall, the project is expected to produce multipliers from the aforementioned target groups, which will engage the latter into a social dialogue on issues of equality and non-discrimination enabling interaction.
The LION project will deploy its potential through 5 Work Packages (WPs), two of which are cross-cutting, namely, management and coordination of actions, as well as dissemination results. Other WPs are focused on the development of a tailormade methodology and action plan based on the results of a thorough primary and secondary research, on trainings to relevant stakeholders from the local community, on psychosocial and legal support to TCNs, on building common activities by organizing events related to sports/culture/music etc., as well as on the establishment of a physical platform under which open dialogue and sharing of experiences will take place. The design of the project is presented in the figure below.
