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The NEW ABC project, funded to the tune of 3 million euros by the European Commission within the Horizon 2020 programme, and led by Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna (Italy), is committed to developing nine innovation actions in nine EU countries aimed at enhancing the integration of refugee and migrant children into host societies through education. The project builds on the expertise of the consortium, which includes 14 partners specialised in various disciplines such as education, art, gender studies, interpretation and translation studies, journalism, law, psychology, linguistics, migration, multilingual education, sociolinguistics or sociology.

The recent wave of large-scale immigrant influxes into many European Member States has increased the challenges posed by the integration of immigrants in the host countries (European Commission, 2016). According to data by UNICEF (2016), 5.4 million child migrants, approximately one in six of the world’s migrants below the age of 18, lives in Europe. "In this context, education systems are facing multiple challenges due to increasing cultural, linguistic and ethnic diversity and socio-economic inequalities. NEW ABC will make its contribution through education because we believe it is a key element in successful integration in all spheres and dimensions of migrants' lives," said Rachele Antonini, Associate Professor in Interpreting and Translation at the University of Bologna and the project coordinator of NEW ABC.

Associate Professor Nettie Boivin of the Ģ��ֱ�� is coordinator of the Finnish work package: International migrations & (im)mobilities: offline/online practices, identities, agency and voice of youth within temporary reception centres. The aim of WP 5 Finnish pilot is to retest the 9th innovative pilot actions tested in Italy in WP 4. It is in a non-formal learning context (reception centers) addressing the challenges and barriers (education, social, socio-cultural) paperless migrant youth (18-20) face in their immobility during their migration process.

The pilot will address these challenges for migrant youth through co-creating multimodal migration journey narratives (stories, videos, art etc.) of their migration (pre-migration, transition, and post-migration). The process of co-creating these narratives will facilitate innovative socio-cultural and education practices and provide representation of the migrants journey. The objectives are to examine how multimodal migration journey narratives pilot actions can enable learning, educational, cultural and social integration during the creation of these practices.

Top-down policies and the poor incorporation of children and young people’s voices and capacities for agency have meant that immigrant children and young people have been largely absent at worst, or included in tokenistic ways, at best. NEW ABC is committed to sustainable and innovative change in mainstream education that enables and empowers all stakeholders to become the real actors of change, rather than just recommending policies. Therefore, NEW ABC co-created pilot actions are multidimensional and involve diverse groups of stakeholders. Children and youth (migrant and non-migrant students, unaccompanied minors, young asylum-seekers and refugees) will be involved as active participants in all actions. These actions include the participation of schools and teachers, local CSOs, NGOs, teaching and intercultural centres, community and families and will develop school and out-of-school formal, informal and non-formal learning resources.

Apart from co-creating and implementing new good practices, a number of existing good practices that have proven to be effective in a particular country will also be adopted. Each pilot scheme represents a response to locally identified needs determined by specific linguistic, cultural, social, emotional and challenges that children and youth face when they access the educational system or are left out of it. By adopting these practices, the aim is to achieve more effective local, national and international policy-making in education and inclusion. “NEW ABC’s ambition is to transform the voices of diverse stakeholders into viable solutions and bring these solutions to the attention of the people and institutions that are responsible for policy- and decision-making in the field of education,” concluded Antonini.

The NEW ABC consortium:

• Alma Mater Studiorum - Università Di Bologna (Coordinator), Italy
• The Open University, UK
• Universita Degli Studi di Torino, Italy
• Jyvaskylan Yliopisto, Finland
• Synthesis Center for Research and Education Limited, Cyprus
• Stowarzyszenie Interkulturalni PL, Poland
• Istituto Comprensivo N1 Forli, Italy
• Combo, France
• Universidade do Porto, Portugal
• Oxford Brookes University, UK
• Active Citizen Europe, Belgium
• Elhuyar Fundazioa, Spain
• Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain
• Uniao de Refugiados em Portugal, Portugal

Further information:

Nettie Boivin, Associate Professor
Department of Language and Communication Studies, Centre for Applied Language Studies
+358408055074, nettie.l.boivin@jyu.fi

Contacts
Email: info@newabc.eu
Website: newabc.eu