antonios – Migration and Inclusion

Saturday 22 October – Networking and future projects

The last day of the workshop was dedicated to activities concentrating around networking between the participants. This included time for discussions around the potentialities for further collaboration and future projects. The day started with a warm-up game by Paschalis where participants were called to grab each other’s hands in a circle and “electrocute” each other, in this way making a closed circuit.

After this game we divided in five working groups. Each table worked under a theme.

The themes were:

Empowering migrants
Working with state and civil actors
Challenge the formal educational system
Youth-work in non-formal organisations
Methods

Every participant had a minute to present to the table what his/her current project is. Then after everyone had finished with this short presentation they could write on three coloured papers the names of others that:

Blue: Help you develop your project
Yellow: Develop personally and professionally
Orange: Shape your future goals

After that, each group visualised their work on a sheet and presented to the others.

After that Oana and Julie showed us a video about the problems that can arise between youth workers and refugees due to unequal power relations.

Afterwards we spent some time making personalised cards for one of the participants of the workshop as well as writing small notes to each other.

After spending some time for making beautiful cards and writing notes to each other we were called to reflect on the contents of the workshop and put a note under each of the three categories:

Content on methods and pedagogical approach
Content on migration and inclusion
Open question

At the closure of the day we all sat in a circle and in the middle were a trash bin and a suitcase. Everyone was given two papers, one to write the most significant thing that he/she will take from the workshop and put in the suitcase, the other what he/she left behind. Both papers were read out loud to the rest of the group.

After a delicious dinner cooked by Mareike and the rest of the kitchen group we had a social gathering or what some called a party in the main room of the school. We drank lots of beers and were stunned by Antonino’s dancing skills and Nuria’s infinite energy!

Sunday 1 May – World Cafe, Refugee Chair and Simulation Game

On the second day of the workshop, and international worker’s day we did non-formal educational activities which aimed to expand our understanding of the refugee condition.

Revijara opened the day with a follow-up from the previous day. After sharing our fears and hopes for the outcomes of the work-shop, it became clear to her that some of the participants were not very confident that they comprehend the differences between the different forms of education. For this, Revijara wrote the three categories of education – formal/ non-formal/ informal – and participants were asked to put adjectives on them.

Then we moved to the first floor of KUBIZ for the World café where Valeria welcomed us with her melodies on the piano. The next step was to divide in groups of five or six and sit in different tables where a moderator with a topic was assigned. The topics were Inclusion, Media, Detention/ Deportation, Living Conditions and European Borders. After a few minutes of discussions the groups moved to the next table to discuss a different subject. Each table had a large white sheet were participants could draw or write their ideas. In the end of the café the moderators presented the sheets that were made.

In the next activity people were called to estimate the population of the different continents of the world, their wealth, their CO2 emissions and percentage of refugees. Then each one put her/ his chair on the sheet writing the continent’s name. It was interesting to test our knowledge and occasionally challenge what we regard as common-sense.

After a delicious vegan lunch cooked by our chef the program of the day continued with an incredibly inventive theatrical game which was starred by the amazing perfomances of the trainees. Each participant was given a role either as a refugee, a smuggler, border control, an NGO worker or a bureaucrat. The aim was for the participants to train their social imaginations for the labyrinthic procedures and difficulties that refugees are facing in their journey to reach the prosperous North, which in this case was called KUBIZlandia!

The day was finished with most of trainees participating in the exciting demonstration of the worker’s first of May in the centre of Berlin.