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Qualificar a Juventude na Europa
Start date: Jan 1, 2016, End date: Dec 31, 2017 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Debating on the current humanitarian challenge that Europe is facing when the traditional image of refugees living in refugee camps no longer tells the true story of refugee movements in the 21 century. We are testifying a massive movement of youngsters that are seeking in Europe a new life and in most cases running from war, hunger and destruction and see in Europe a new hope. However bigger challenges for these youngsters are yet to come. This massive movement of people is demanding that all that see Europe as a place for solidarity to act and try to support and create adequate solutions. This speech is more important when we are in the scope of the end of European Year for Development it is emergent to analyse the results overcome with the actions promoted by the European Union. For this reason it is important to involve actively European Youth in the support of these people that are already in Europe and will live in our communities. Youth is Youth and the needs are the same nevertheless our ethnicity, our religion, our nationality, we all have the same needs and it is important to create a peer-to-peer movement. When they settle in a city, urban refugees are usually confronted with the same poverty problems as the local urban poor. Yet they also face additional challenges due to their refugee status: in most cases, they live with the constant fear of being arrested, detained and returned forcibly to their home country. They are denied access to basic services such as education or health and are exposed to harassment, intimidation and discrimination. Yet it is extremely challenging to assist and support refugees in urban settings. Given the very limited assistance of aid agencies in cities, refugee-led organisations provide the bulk of the assistance to their own communities. Volunteers together with Adamastor staff will support those groups to develop their capacity to organise, plan and advocate for themselves. This includes: technical assistance and training, support in governance, fundraising and communication mapping. We believe self-reliance is key to promote sustainable solutions. Volunteers will help the humanitarian community adapt to the challenges of protecting refugees in cities. For this we will use a collective impact strategy to create global connections between NGOs, academics, refugee-led organisations, urban designers, the private sector and local community, to help them share best practices and work together towards shared goals. We believe that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. We will support the advocacy work of our partner NGOs in the field, also organise round-tables with policy makers and we coordinate joint advocacy strategies at the regional and local levels. Working with asylum seekers and refugees in almost any location in the world involves juggling vulnerability with service availability, battling bureaucracy and bearing witness to remarkable people. Beyond these ‘ordinary’ challenges, Europe has a very ambivalent relationship with the asylum seekers, refugees and migrants in its territory and this project will aware youngsters to this reality and work in the field so that they can provide a solid answer and work on viable solutions for this crisis. This Human Movement is misunderstood and the unique situation of each group is indistinguishable from the other in a discourse that focuses entirely on ‘migrants’. This discourse is perpetuated outside the country by the international media, donors and European governments who, with very few exceptions, misrepresent the complex mixed migration context in their countries of origin as a simplistic scenario of ‘everyone’ wanting to come to Europe. Volunteers will develop active activities for the refugees, asylum seekers and migrants, especially for Youth and Children in order to support their integration and help them to recognise the effort of European citizens in finding a solution. This project is divided in two activities. One activity for hosting volunteers in Portugal for a six months period divided in two flows and another activity for sending Portuguese volunteers abroad to the same partner countries. The main purpose is that both PT volunteers and foreign volunteers worked together in their local communities. So while we host here the foreign volunteers the Portuguese volunteers will support them in the activities. When the period of the hosted volunteer ends and he/she returns home a Portuguese volunteer will to the same in their local community with the same support.
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