Beyond Retirement - A Migrant Integration Resource

"The BRAMIR project addressed two important European concerns: The ageing of the population and an increasing dependence on immigration to meet current and future labour-force requirements. While there is considerable variance with regard to the speed and immediacy of these changes within and between Member States, they will impact all countries in the not too distant future. Immigration has become a 'normal' part of life in Europe. The challenge for Member States moving forward is to enhance migrant integration into host country society and economy and efforts being made to attract workers from non-EU countries need to go hand in hand with measures to ensure social cohesion and equal treatment. The BRAMIR project therefore proposes a mutually beneficial arrangement affordingseniors an opportunity to remain active contributors to society while addressing the growing migrant integration problems, such as: - Information gap: Migrants experience a lack of knowledge about their new social and civic systems. - Network gap: Although immigrant organizations try to build or solidify networks within immigrant communities they do little to tie these organizations to groups outside of the immigrant communities. The project enrolled new possibilities for seniors to become ""qualified"" volunteers to support the development of key civic and social competences within the established and growing migrant communities.The BRAMIR consortium consisted of 9 partners representing 8 Member States and brought together a wide range of expertise. Included was also an associated partner from Switzerland. The aim of the partnership was to develop and implement a multi-layered andragogic framework design for the target group comprising older workers approaching retirement and recent retirees. The framework incorporates a bespoke train-the-trainer curriculum; a suite of psychographic profiling tools; an induction programm, an e-learning portal, a digital toolbox of appropriate teaching resources for redeployment of the senior target group as volunteers to support the development of key civic and social competences and a Policy Paper for authorities and political institutions.All training resources can be accessed through the project website www.bramir.eu. The most resources developed are available in English, German, French, Czech, Greek, Finnish, Italian and Romanian."