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ReEntry – Supports for Refugee Entrepreneurs to Create Normality in a Difficult Surrounding
Start date: Sep 1, 2016, End date: Feb 28, 2018 PROJECT  FINISHED 

One of the four common EU objectives of the Education and training 2020 (ET 2020) framework to address challenges in education and training systems by 2020 is to enhance creativity and innovation, including entrepreneurship, at all levels of education and training.The recent refugee’s wave has brought over one million refugees to Europe, and the influx will continue also in the years to come. Apart from political questions concerning the distribution of refugees and asylum seekers, the most urgent aspects are their integration into our societand their employment. A refugee entrepreneur, like any entrepreneur, brings many potential benefits to their host community. First of all, an entrepreneur creates at least one job for her-/himself. In addition they can employ other refugees and/or host country nationals. The kind of businesses opened by refugees often reflect innovative solutions to local problems and are therefore more effective at addressing the needs of specific target groups than large, donor-driven programmes. Having a (social) enterprise can also help to create normality in a difficult surrounding. Providing familiar food or wedding dresses not only brings employment, but also ways to unite communities, preserve traditions and a sense of normality. Overall, it can be said that entrepreneurship improves the psychological well-being of individuals and the overall atmosphere.Becoming an entrepreneur is always a challenge and often not the most obvious choice for a refugee. He/she needs, above all, information provision, networking (with both other refugees/migrants and members of the host community), mentoring, training, and finally also investment and funding. All of these are equally relevant in the refugee context.Therefore, the overall objective of our strategic partnership is to provide an overview about projects, initiatives and methods which support and facilitate refugee entrepreneurship.In order to reach this objective, the specific objectives are• to implement an e-platform with access to initiatives and learning information materials that have been identified and collected in the course of the project, especially concerning market conditions, policies and administrational settings, entrepreneurship skills and initiatives, the mind-set, skills and knowledge to generate creative ideas; and finally about support programmes for immigrant entrepreneurs; • to summarize the findings in a “Catalogue for Immigrant Entrepreneurs” that will give an overview about the current situation of the specific project environment in the partners’ countries, and present the initiatives, projects and materials with explanations in all languages of the partnership; • to implement also an online interactive forum for networking, exchange of experience and good practice that makes use of Skype’s real-time translation in 8 spoken and 50 written languages, thus breaking down language barriers between users from different countries, and supporting ideas, foster exchange and assist initiatives that build both livelihoods and a sense of normality.The project fits into the common underlying strategy of the partners insofar that the identification and selection of initiatives, materials and approaches for intercultural communication is in line with their operational strategies; and it will provide solutions to the needs of the associated public sector partners.
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