Empowering migrant women through involvement in decision making and what it takes to be included in working life

"<< Background >>We wanted to create a project that focuses on minority women and what kind of tools can be useful in connection with empowerment. The needs we have addressed are language skills, system- and cultural understanding. This is a group of people who are excluded from the labor market and loosely connected to the society they live in. The system has few effective and innovative measures against the target group. Which means that these groups end up as passive recipients of social assistance. To help see this group in a new perspective, we wanted to bring in an outside perspective and how other countries solve this problem. We have achieved this through two partners we have in Spain and Italy. << Objectives >>We wanted to achieve that the women would experience greater participation in social life and get closer to working life. Through the project, we wanted the women to experience a sense of mastery and believe in their own worth and skills.At the same time, we wanted to achieve a greater perspective on the various issues that the target group represents in the face of our culture and society. Through partnership with two different countries, we hoped to get a different perspective and concrete measures on how to achieve progression, inclusion and development of the target group.<< Implementation >>We established the town hall canteen as a measure to activate the target group weekly. Here, the women have prepared food from their own country and at the same time produced ordinary canteen food. They have also participated in language training and training in Norwegian working life. As well as being exposed to social and cultural codes.We have had meetings with the women and social entrepreneurs, first aid courses, meetings with the Norwegian Food Safety Authority and karate lessons.The women have also had a central role in preparing and serving food in connection with various meeting activities and courses in the town hall.We have had a study trip to Palermo in Italy. There we met both partners and the theme was to develop tools for empowerment, as well as look at and gain knowledge from various social entrepreneurs who work towards the same target group.Since we have been in a pandemic and soon after the war broke out in Ukraine, we have only carried out one study trip. The partner from Spain has instead made a film with various social entrepreneurs, including the women in the project. M.Art has created the method ""MeMO - social entrepreneurship methodology & guidelines for project recipients"".<< Results >>We have carried out a study trip to Palermo, regular digital meetings with the partners and thus established good international relations.We have started canteen operations run by the women in the target group.We have made the women gain an increased understanding of culture, work and society.The women have gained increased self-confidence and dare to be more active in terms of using language and meeting Norwegians than when they started the project.We have also a film about empowering migrants and migrants women in Spain, Italy and Norway. We also have a methodology that now can help us identify a social entrepreneur."