TABADOL

"The current situation in Europe can be characterized by the lack of adequate responses when it comes to shaping a living together and migrants and locals being poorly prepared for this. Mutual exchange, appreciation of the other’s cultural background and experiences remain low. The paradigm of the ""others"" and ""us"" determines the perception of foreigners. This often leads to the point where migrants are being perceived as a thread instead of as potential active citizens that can enrich European societies. Furthermore, national hosting societies often feel left behind by European decision makers. As a consequence, the idea of a unified European society where everybody takes an active European citizenship gets more and more replaced by nationalistic movements and xenophobia. At the same time, young refugees lack of information and orientation to build up a self-determined life in Europe, being often pushed into a passive role by the current national and European asylum system. Coming from completely different cultural and historical contexts, sometimes combined with an individual low educational background, most of them have only a rudimentary knowledge of the European Union: its history and mechanisms, the European idea and the opportunities and it offers to its (active) citizens are unknown to a recently arrived refugee. Additionally, many refugees in the EU tend to be rather confronted with the limitations the European framework (keyword: Dublin Regulation, sanctioning of secondary movements) has on their lifes. Contribution to the European idea is almost impossible in these conditions. Youth exchange programs often are not accessible for disadvantaged youth, due to socio-cultural or educational barriers or to financial reasons. Furthermore, many projects try to involve displaced youth, but often carry out a “helpers mentality” where young refugees are “victimized” instead of being empowered. Only a few projects try to create an exchange between young refugees and young locals at eye level. With TABADOL, we wanted to get active and create such an exchange platform together with other young people in Europe, in order to actively shape the positive living together of local and migrant populations.In cooperation with our Italian partner team, our main activity was to carry out the development, implementation and management of an empowerment exchange program for 30 young refugees in Witten, Germany and Bologna, Italy. Thanks to the transnational approach, we were able to learn from and support each other during the project development and implementation, which allowed us to achieve important non-formal competences and skills in project management. Thanks to additional training and seminars, we became ""Facilitators of Intercultural Cohesion"" and change-makers promoting active European citizenship among other young Europeans and refugees.With TABADOL, we follow a holistic and truly European approach, where we want to promote a European identity among young people with(out) migration biography and raise awareness on migrants’ potential to contribute to European societies as Active Citizens and to propose new forms of involvement thanks to their background."