About

The initial idea for a Programme for IT courses for migrants and refugees was born within the ALL DIGITAL (then Telecentre-Europe) network during the Telecentre Europe General Assembly in Amsterdam in 2016 and was endorsed by many members. The working title of the programme was “WELCOME”. The need for a programme to support this specific target group was obvious.

Since then, and based on this initial idea, we have explored several opportunities.

The aim of the project “WELCOME Programme” is to exchange best practices between organisations specialised in digital inclusion of disadvantaged groups and, based on this exchange, to develop and pilot an innovative methodology for social inclusion of third country nationals in educational and social activities, cultural life, volunteering and digital creation activities.

For this purpose, we developed a programme of creative IT workshops, including methodology and training materials, based on best practices of the partners and beyond. Afterwards, trainers from partner organisations  have been trained to use the programme and its materials in pilots. These trainers run two rounds of pilots.

During the piloting, third-country nationals aged 16 to 30 took part in the programme and improved their IT skills, language and soft skills through creative IT workshops.

They have been trained as mentors and then worked as volunteers and organize 40 creative IT workshops, reaching 400 people in total in mixed groups of third country nationals and European nationals. The content of these workshops fostered peer learning and exchanges between local communities and third country nationals.

As part of the programme, young participants produced digital stories to reflect on the programme experience. They used them to

a) reach a total of 1,000 of their peers to motivate them to volunteer or participate in educational, social and cultural activities and

b) reach a total of 500 key stakeholders in education, social and cultural organisations to raise awareness about the need to make activities more inclusive for third country nationals.

The final version of the programme and other project outputs have been disseminated to key stakeholders to stimulate adoption of the programme and to raise awareness about the need for practices inclusive of third country nationals.

Funded by: Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund, call AMIF-2016-AG-INTE-01 “Integration of 3rd country nationals”
Duration: 21 months
Start date: 01/10/2017
End date: 30/06/2019
Website: digitalwelcome.eu

To find publications about the project on social media, please check #digitalwelcome

Partners:

ALL DIGITAL (formerly Telecentre-Europe AISBL), Belgium – Coordinator
Media Actie Kuregem Stad (Maks), Belgium
IASIS, Greece
Stiftung Digitale Chancen (SDC), Germany
Fondazione Mondo Digitale (FMD), Italy
Colectic (formerly Associacio per a Joves Teb), Spain
Centro Studi Citta di Foligno Associazione (CSF), Italy