Ubragri4women
Description
Urbagri4women (Innovative practices and joint urban initiatives to foster the integration of migrant women in the receiving society within urban agriculture practices) is co-funded by the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund of the European Union (2016-2018) and aims to foster the integration of migrant women, enabling them to develop innovative agricultural initiatives contributing to urban rehabilitation. Seven organisations from seven EU countries promote social inclusion and female empowerment through the rehabilitation of urban outskirts, where the practice of urban agriculture is applied through practical laboratories fostering intercultural dialogue and more sustainable cities and communities.
Urbagri4women aims at supporting the exchange of good practices, transferring and implementing creative and innovative practices and joint initiatives that foster the integration of migrant women, including asylum seekers and beneficiaries of international protection, in the receiving society within urban agriculture initiatives, (e.g. Urban Agriculture Labs (UALs)), through educational and recreational activities, vocational training, help with accessing the labour market, anti-discrimination and cultural initiatives that promote intercultural dialogue, and a culture of welcoming communities, with the involvement of public administrations, social partners, migrant organisations and other relevant stakeholders. The project philosophy, implementations and results are in line with, Goal 2 regarding the promotion of sustainable agriculture, in response to the SDGs/2030 Agenda. The project philosophy is also in line with Goal 5 and 10 in response to the need for empowering migrant women. <br />
In the absence of an effective policy of inclusion of migrants in the EU, the project aspires to implement several initiatives promoting the integration of migrant women. To this extent, all 7 organisations* from 7 EU countries will promote social inclusion and female empowerment through the rehabilitation of urban outskirts, currently in a situation of abandonment or decay, where the practice of urban agriculture is applied through practical laboratories that aim to foster intercultural dialogue and more sustainable cities and communities.<br />
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In line with the project’s philosophy and aims and objectives, in terms of outputs and deliverables having direct impact on local stakeholders, the project has completed the following: 7 Communities of Practice formalized; 21 focus groups with the Communities of practice; 1 Transnational network for knowledge sharing and capacity building; 1 ICT tool supporting transnational knowledge sharing and capacity building; 1 Transnational reflective learning process/1 transnational virtual mentoring approach; 1 Transnational workshop; 1 Transnational study visit; 1 distance e-learning material, and 1 catalogue of good practices; 7 Lists of identified empty spaces and "non-places" of involved cities; 7 Urban Agriculture Labs established; 7 project works; 7 vocational training programmes and materials; 1 guideline for SWOT analysis form UALs/1 online public consultation template/7 SWOT Analysis form UALs; 1 Green Paper elaborated/1 Online public consultation; 1 Migrant woman integration Manifesto signed .<br />
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*The Consortium consists of 7 partners from 7 EU Countries, all NGOs working for the promotion of an intercultural society through the development of cross-cultural relationships and networks, both at local and at international level, and conducting actions for migrants living in disadvantaged areas of their countries, promoting cultural diversity and citizenship: TAMAT-IT (Leading Organisation); Cardet-CY, Amsed-FR, AIDGlobal-PT, IED-GR, Sudwind–AT and Gyros-UK.
Personalised activities based on the migrant women’s needs as well as the receiving societies’ urban agricultural needs were implemented in a collaborative environment enhancing motivation and participation, avoiding communication gaps and misunderstanding.
Stakeholders and interested parties were invited to join forces throughout a number of initiatives.
Workplan of the project:
Urbagri4women workplan run through three main activities: (a) It started from the capacity building for all actors that should steer the migrant women integration ; (b) through educational and recreational activities, vocational training, help to access to the labour market, anti-discrimination, cultural initiatives; (c) till arriving to direct involvement of migrant women in concrete and joint initiatives that fostered their integration in the receiving society within UALs
Execution of the project:
The projects’ philosophy and context were innovative in various partner-countries. Arriving to direct involvement of migrant women in joint urban agricultural initiatives was not an easy task/ goal, especially wherever it had never occurred before (systematically), e.g. Cyprus, Greece and Portugal.
For the Cypriot case, the ‘bring your child to school and join our classes’ approach worked splendidly for the migrant women (migrant mothers) learners/ participants, throughout the implementation phase. Morning classes in an easily accessible and familiar place turned to be an excellent idea that motivated migrant women to join the programme implementations and commit until the end. The collaboration with the Headschool teachers and secretariat, that served the channels for women migrants’ recruitment at first place, was key to the success of the project’s implementations. The personalised and needs-based approach adopted throughout the project cycle were key to the implementations’ success, whereas good teaching and learning practices, such as study visits motivated migrant women to learn not only inside classroom settings but also outside the classroom, in out-doors/ off-school environments, enhancing social inclusion and getting to know the hosting society spaces and places.
Monitoring mechanisms:
Along with proposal-wise official monitoring mechanisms (e.g. evaluation questionnaires), collaboration and communication flow amongst all main interested parties, i.e. the migrant mother learners/ participants, the trainer, the volunteers, the focus groups members, the projects’ consortium, etc., played a key role to monitoring. To this respect, constructive feedback in contexts of self- and group reflection, and peer review fostered quality in processes and outputs.
(1) The Community of Practice played a crucial role in the success of the project.
(2) The Stakeholders supported the project all the way through (e.g. the Headschool teachers in Cyprus; the City of Strasbourg in France; the partnership with the City Hall of Loures, in Portugal; the Municipality of Larissa in Greece; etc.).
(3) The availability of the partner organisations and willingness to make things work effectively.
(4) Engagement and participation of migrant women. What motivated them mostly were, amongst others the following facts:
(a) Partners shared the project objectives from the outset, clarifying the working context
(b) Partners decided together with the migrant women about the development of the project work. Tasks were not given and set in advance but negotiated and co-decided.
(c) Training was linked, in most cases (IT, CY, GR, PT), with the Urban Agriculture Laboratory and the development of the project work. This strategy allowed the beneficiaries to have a common goal to pursue that went beyond simple training activities.
(d) Tailor made training: the partners didn’t propose a standard training but designed it to fit the needs of the women in terms, of knowledge, competences, times, approaches, methodologies, etc.
(e)Training was enriched with study-visits and inspirational talks (CY, IT, GR), so as to enhance participation and having fun. Furthermore, they supported the reciprocal knowledge and integration with local organizations and farmers.
(f) Choosing a venue close to the migrant women houses or the city centre reduced dropouts (GR, CY, PT).
(g) The ‘bring your child to school and join our classes’ approach worked very well for the migrant women (migrant mothers) learners. Morning classes turned to be an exciting way to start your day! (CY).
(5) Processes and results were observable and immediately sharable with the public via social media.
(6) The variety of topics chosen for the lab work display the impact of the project in societies: Italy, typical African agri-food production; France, growing fruits and vegetables; Austria, ornament and decoration of urban gardens; Cyprus, planting and growing aromatics/ creating an outdoors aromatics café; Greece, working with dried herbs; Portugal, planting and growing herbs and vegetables from their home countries (mainly African).
1. Poor language skills make it difficult to execute the training modules as planned. On several occasions the trainer had to serve as a translator/ interpreter, this being time-consuming and energy-consuming as well. In other occasions extra costs were reported as a translator/ interpreter had to be appointed (e.g. Arabic language). Suggestion: The role of an interpreter/ translator is critical in these cases
2. Some migrants are reluctant to join training programmes due to bad prior experience with national programmes’ daily training (IT). Suggestion: It is considered critical for migration integration training and programmes being tailor-made, designed and delivered based on migrants’ actual needs. This is one of the first steps towards engagement and participation
3. Consisting of activities that that do not bring an immediate economic benefit to participants or beneficiaries (that are mostly in unstable socio-economical situations), such projects are often judged as not very concrete and of little interest and this migrant women are discouraged to participate. Suggestion: A turn to projects and initiatives that may bring or even ensure an immediate economic benefit is considered critical; but it is possible to plan activities that can directly and immediately give an added value to the beneficiaries like for example the production of national food they like or obtain a plant or ingredient that they usually have in their daily life.
5. Women were very reluctant in growing fruits, vegetables, etc., this is why men’s role emerged as critical in order to keep the project works running smoothly. Suggestion: Considering that not all the women are addressed or addicted to agricultural activities, the plan should be tailored to the women expertise whose interest should be cached by further action for explaining the successful and fruitful potentialities of agricultural activities.
1. Beneficiaries are excited by the idea and impact of the project that adds to sustainability:
-In Italy migrant women are enthusiastically working on the idea of creating an association and experiment the production of African food
-In Austria, migrant women may sell their products
-In Greece, migrant women discussed the possibility of a women’s collective
-In Cyprus, migrant women plan to organize wellbeing inspirational talks
-In Portugal, the Municipality of Loures will have community gardens to the local residents and the project participants/migrant women will have priority in having one of these spaces.
-In France, an informal collective to begin will be held, which will lead to the creation of an association.
2. The project implementations and experimentations, opened new pathways for:
(a) Sustainable actions: From the early days or as time went by, a need for sustainability/ sustainable actions emerged and was reported by many partner- countries (e.g. IT, CY, …)
(b) Collaboration and Joint actions: With women and men working towards urban agriculture initiatives; and with migrant and local people and associations to collaborate.
(c) Personal development: Women started thinking about independent work, e.g. opening a firm (FR), opening a traditional Syrian shop (CY), etc.
(d) Professional development: the project has created a genuine potential for people to become economically active, thanks to a very specific vocational training, focused also on business and management matter and to the engagement of the women in the elaboration of a concrete sustainable project work.
(e) New skills and competences: networking, collaboration, evaluation, life-long learning
3. The public opinion in most partner countries is in favor of the urban agriculture in general. That means that there is space to work out a project with high possibilities of income.
4. Local policies in partner countries are placing more emphasis nowadays on migration integration and inclusion and there are opportunities for language courses to begin with.
5. Local policies in most partner countries are in favour of the creation of start-ups, which is an excellent point for such project works.
In the framework of Urbagri4women, a two-years-funded project by the Asylum and Migration Integration Funds of the EU (AMIF), local environmental framework conditions and socio-economic potentialities are considered as basic elements for setting up the Urban Agriculture Labs, one of the main outputs and deliverables of the project. Each partner has set up the Urban Agriculture Lab in chosen areas and, where possible, has succeeded in managing also all the formal procedures at Municipal level for activating, formally committed, pilot activities of urban regeneration and social recovery.<br />
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In summarising the results of the UALs in terms of economic relations between the various actors in the field of urban management and social integration directly involving migrant women in the equitable and sustainable development of cities, it can be said that Urbagri4women UALs as a creative and innovative initiative has succeeded in moving forward the opportunity to develop a common union approach to asylum and immigration, foreseeing migrant women integration actions into Municipalities.<br />
This commitment aims at launching start-up immigrant integration support programmes for European Municipalities pushing migrants to become the actors in the management of the humanitarian crisis where they are involved, through urban agriculture practices, recovering the degradation of the urban outlying areas and also those destined to the refugees camps and shelters.<br />
In reflecting on the Urbagri4women project innovative processes and outcomes, if there were three (3) lessons learnt to be named, these would be the following:<br />
(a) Migrant women are humans with a name, a voice, capacities, talents, wants, needs and visions! They are humans, not numbers!<br />
(b) School settings may successfully host and develop/ contextualize a variety of migration integration sustainable opportunities.<br />
(c) Needs-based approach and personalising are good practices in approaching and working with migrants for sustainable solutions to migration integration issues.<br />
In the life-cycle of this project, there were numerous benefits for a number of beneficiaries and interested parties:<br />
FOR THE MIGRANT WOMEN to acknowledge the capacities they have in the framework in question. Each woman in challenged to understand that she is capable of doing things within the urban agriculture area in specific and host society in general. This boosts migrant women self-confidence and feeling of belonging.<br />
FOR MUNICIPALITIES AND POLICY MAKERS to acknowledge the potentials migrant women have in the field in question, trust migrant women capacities and provide constant and sustainable opportunities for women to have an active participation in life-changing and society-enriching contexts.<br />
FOR SCHOOL AUTHORITIES: to be introduced to innovative ways to involve migrant families in contemporary school actions and keep them work sustainability-wise for the years to come.
1. In some partner countries a number of the participants/ migrant women didn’t know how to read/write, i.e. are facing functional illiteracy issues.
(It is suggested for pedagogic tools, methods and approaches to be adapted accordingly and for some ideas/topics that might be more difficult to communicate to be simplified).
2. Certain occasions force to slow down the project activities and even pause them:
3. Selling products on a big scale undergoes regulations that may be difficult for the beneficiaries.
4. Women migrants as a target group has a high drop-out risk due to several factors,
5. The lack of a participant with a leader/ leading profile to ensure the project continuity/sustainability. It is suggested to foster the leading skills of women migrants who mainly share the profile of a low esteem person lacking self-confidence, and leading skills.
The SWOT analysis as well as the policy papers drafted/ compiled throughout the project may be reached through the project’s website: https://www.urbagri4women.com/, whereas for updates on the projects you may visit the project’s FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/Urbagri4Women/
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- Europe
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Contact Information
Elena Xeni, Project Manager-Researcher