The four-day seminar held this year, from 18 to 22 October in Lecce, Italy, entitled “Solidarity Phase: how to cope with migrants inclusion in the time of COVID-19” resulted in a draft strategy for improving European policies on migration issues, rights of migrants and their inclusion in society. The seminar was attended by 30 youth workers from 14 European countries. The main goal was to share the experiences of the participants who are directly and indirectly involved in the integration of migrants and their active involvement in societal processes. Overcoming stereotypes and stigmatization of the migrant status was the focus of the seminar, which clearly underlined the need for a better understanding of human rights and equity for active involvement in political processes and equality in countries where migrants should acquire resident status.
Experiences were shared at the seminar and the process of discrimination was clearly pointed out, where migrant status is associated with strong ambivalent constructs, which impede the realization of non-residents, and impede the inclusion of the other as part of the whole as a predisposition for coexistence in a state of diversity. The seminar through dynamic and active participation of participants, as well as the willingness of the organizers to respond to the importance of overcoming migration-related problems, managed to create a platform of conceptual solutions that would provide an inclusive matrix to overcome the lack of understanding of migration processes. This was achieved through various activities to point out the importance of universal values and their achievement through a planning and strategic process.
The seminar organized by Terzo Millenio, with the support of the Erasmus+ program, confirmed that non-formal learning through different methodology, practice and learning of new tools achieves new principles in the daily work of the NGO sector, where professionals succeed through various practices to share knowledge that is useful and effectively brings results.
CET Platform Skopje through its participants made a significant contribution to the seminar, where they pointed out the importance of digital platforms and the importance of real migration information as a process to facilitate access to verified information, as a mutual system for understanding each other, where diversity becomes a strong point of societies, and not its destabilization.
– Summary written by Veronika Kamchevska
