Migration and refugee movements in the Mediterranean countries have gained unprecedented momentum in recent years. The situation along migratory routes to Europe is changing faster than ever before. Directly to Turkey from the borders, to Turkey and the islands in Mediterranean from “Eastern Mediterranean Route”, to Malta and Greece from “Central Mediterranean Route”, to Portugal from the “Western Mediterranean Route”.
An estimated 11 million Syrians have fled their homes since the outbreak of the civil war in March 2011. Now, in the sixth year of war, 13.5 million are in need of humanitarian assistance within the country. Among those escaping the conflict, the majority have sought refuge in neighbouring countries or within Syria itself. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 4.8 million have fled to Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq, and 6.6 million are internally displaced within Syria. Meanwhile about one million have requested asylum to Europe.
According to the International agreements and the constitution ‘’the right to live’’ is one of the essential rights that provides other rights to be put into practice. In order for refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants to count in social inclusion and to continue their lives in hosting countries, they must improve their level of language. Because of the lack of their language skills, the individuals who can’t communicate with their social environments causes problems shown in statistics. The adults lacking host countries’ languages create unsolvable problems in health, education and all areas.
The objectives of the project are:
- to improve and extend the supply of high quality learning opportunities to the needs of individual low-skilled or low qualified woman refugees so they acquire literacy competences also the digital competences, including through the validation of skills acquired through informal and non-formal learning as mentioned in Erasmus+ Programme Guide.
- to provide an e/m-language learning module in e-learning platform for the woman refugees to learn the language of the host community or country.
- to implement a succession of activities that promote the social integration of refugees in the host society.
The project aims:
- to improve and provide a quality distance education program in the language teaching and learning,
- provide a quality methodology and curricula,
- improve accessibility for woman refugees,
- design the platform and other ICT Applications,
- stimulate the acquisition of ICT skills,
- to provide virtual courses in partners’ languages to a number of woman refugees who settled in the partner countries.
According to the researches done, refugees who do not learn the language of hosting country are under more of a risk of being taken advantage of and badly treated.
With these aims and objectives, project focuses on woman refugees’ language learning (literacy) with the help of distance education tools reaching the e-learning platform from the PCs or from their smart phones and/or tablets via Android based mobile applications. To this end, the target group will not only have literacy competences but they will also improve their digital skills and competences.
Project will be disseminated internally at each participant organization (as some partners represent very big organizations, as the case of the Directorate of National Education, e-Learning Training Center, NGO and University) whose staff will be aware of the Project’s existence and foreseen internal impacts. Final Dissemination Seminars will be held in Turkey, Greece, Malta and Portugal as local, regional, national and EU level. These disseminations also envisage the participation and contribution of everyone, as well as the enhancement of further internal use of Project results. Externally, the Project will be disseminated during its entire duration, near the Training provider NGOs and training and e-learning provider Institutions and Companies (SMEs, large companies, schools and Universities). This is of importance when disseminating near their local, regional and national networks.
The ICT infrastructure of the project (Web Portal, e-Learning Platform and other Web Services) are a paradigm how education must be in the digital era and complete the innovative character of the project.