IncluEurope - Young Refugees Structured Democratic Participation in Europe - INTERVIEW WITH SAQIB, FAIZAN, JAMEELA AND MERILIN

Name of the project: IncluEurope - Young Refugees Structured Democratic Participation in Europe

Date: 17^th until 25^th June 2017

Country/City: Sweden, Stockholm

What was the main topic of the event?

Saqib Naveed - The main topic of the project that we how can collaborate with young refugees in the democratic process of the country where they are settled. The essence of the project was to build a network which will eventually help the refugees to come together and work for the society and refugees.

Faizan Khan - To empower young refugees and the organizations run by them and/or working with them to encourage democratic participation, civic engagement and social inclusion in the host communities. Create and maintain a network of youth refugee’s organizations that can work together at European level, and support each other on their local programs and projects.

Jameela Prits - SDP. Structured Democratic participation

Merilin Joesaar - How to increase the participation of young refugees

What was the biggest learning moments on the event for you?

Saqib Naveed - Probably the biggest learning moment was the inclusion games, seminars and workshop that we did during the project. Last two days of the training were quite interesting and full of learning as we have to make our own projects with the other participant from other countries. We learned the tool of participation from the trainers and then we implemented the learning’s on our project and presented in front of participants. Feedback on the presentations were quite effective as well to think broader about the topic.

Faizan Khan - While watching documentary movie on detainees living in detention center. I realized that going through life’s challenges require strength — a lot of strength — both mental and physical because they go hand in hand. You need to stay strong. You need support from family and friends. Most importantly, you need to change your outlook on life. You need to understand that you can’t change the way things are but you can change the way you look at things. Having gone through a struggle, you realize that sometimes you can be your own worst enemy. You can choose to blame yourself for what’s gone wrong, or you can forgive yourself and move on. Dwelling on such thoughts can only create self-harm and delay healing. To be able to heal, you need to accept the circumstances, forgive yourself and your mistakes, and move on.

Jameela Prits - When we had sharing realities from each country about the life of refugees as I am working with refugees in Estonia as interpreter.

Merilin Joesaar - Actually one of the coolest moments was when two of the participants found out that they we're old classmates around 20 years ago in their homeland Syria. And after all this time they met in this project, one came from France and other Sweden. It seriously shows how small the world is

Do you have any plans to continue active in the field? If yes, what?

Saqib Naveed - Yes, because I always wanted to participate in the volunteers work or projects which are related with the refugees. I myself is a student of Intercultural communication and inclusion of refugees in the society is one of the hot topic of my course. I believe that it will help me out in selecting the appropriate topic for my thesis and this training would help me to get more data from the participation and the network that I have built during the project.

Faizan Khan - Yes, I am willing to continue and play my role in this field. I suggested them to use IT platform so that they can achieve their goals in desired time. I will try to introduce them existing IT platform so they can communicate easily, sharing information and maintaining database.

Jameela Prits - Yes, I would like to continue learning more about refugees and their lives in each country.

Merilin Joesaar - I'm not sure yet. I'll probably try to organize some events regarding this topic.

Would you recommend it to your friends? I yes, why? If not, why not?

Saqib Naveed - Yes, I would love to suggest it to my friends as the learning outcomes were excellent from this project and hopefully my friends who are interested in these sorts of project will participate in future as well.

Faizan Khan - Yes I will recommend and convince them to participate because of that they will be able to know about different cultures and living style of people. They can improve their conversation and leadership skills by learning. I think it’s important to know Human Rights, Democracy, Youth Participation, Structured Participation and Inclusion.

Jameela Prits - Yes, it was interesting course that improved so many ideas and open an wide eye on the whole world not only in Estonia.

Merilin Joesaar - Definitely! Everyone should get at least a little try in these kind of projects and check out how awesome they actually are. Talking is one thing, but actually going and experiencing them is another!

More comments or anything else you would like to share? You can add here in your own language, if you want!

Faizan Khan - I really enjoyed my time over there, spending time with people from different countries knowing about their language, food, music, life style. Almost every day after training we use to go out and discover different parts of city. Definitely I will visit Stockholm again.

This Project was financed by European Commission's Erasmus + Programme