SEESI Project
The SEESI Project (Strengthening Employment and Education Skills for Integration – refugee, migrant and asylum seekers) is as Erasmus + funded programme which is aiming to support in community leaders to support their peers with integration through their advocacy and support skills.
The project is being led by Ashley Community Housing who are based in Bristol in the UK. The partner organisations are;
Folkuniversitetet (Sweden), FISPE (France), Dimitra Education & Consulting (Greece), Rinova (UK), and Ballymun Job Centre Co-operative Society Limited (Ireland).
The project kicked off in September 2018 and will run until August 2021.
The SEESI project hopes to work with these community leaders, along with their peers and support networks, to create training modules which can help upskill these key individuals in the voluntary work they carry out by supporting individuals in their community to settle into their new home through peer support and advocacy.
Through this method, SEESI is hoping to remove the sole focus on language attainment as a first step to community integration, but rather for it to run alongside support from community leaders to access appropriate training, education, employment and community services at the same time, therefore speeding up the overall integration rate of newly arrived refugees, migrants and asylum seekers.
This is also known as the Life Before Language Methodology.
The project is set up in multiple stages:
1. Research and engagement with refugees, migrants and asylum seekers, alongside statutory service providers, to establish what supports are currently in place and what the communities would like to see created.
2. Creation of the in community support worker/volunteer competence framework
3. Creation of the Life Before Language Methodology (training modules)
4. Creation of a tutor guide
5. Life Before Language Digital Learning Platform
6. Guidance and Guidelines for Life Before Language service integration
Over the past number of months BJC have reached out and engaged with multiple organisations and representatives from the migrant, refugee and asylum seeker communities.
These engagements have allowed BJC to compile a national report on the current systems in place for these groups when they are seeking to engage in integration through employment training or education. The national reports from each partner will be consolidated to form a European wide report on the experience of the LBL model across the continent. Stay tuned for more news as we progress through the project!
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(2020)