“The Smile of the Child” hosted successfully in Athens the 3rd meeting of the“Building Knowledge from Local Practices: a solution for better care and integration of unaccompanied minors” project
12 February 2019
Athens, 4 February 2019
The 3rd meeting of the Community of best practices and knowledge for unaccompanied minors in Europe was hosted from 29 to 31 January in Athens in the framework of the EU project "Building Knowledge from Local Practices: a solution for better care and integration of unaccompanied minors". The meeting was held parallel to the 4th meeting of the Steering Committee held on 28 January and 1 February.
Members of the scientific personnel of “The Smile of the Child” as well as representatives of the Organizations Apprentis d'Auteuil from France, Federazione SCS CNOS from Italy, Christliches Jugenddorfwerk Deutschlands from Germany and partners from the research field, namely the University of Bedfordshire in England and the Observatory on the migration of minors (University of Poitiers) in France took part in the meeting.
The President of the Board of Directors of the Organization “The Smile of the Child”, Mr. Konstantinos Giannopoulos pointed out: “It is absolutely necessary to cooperate with European Organizations in order to provide direct and holistic support to unaccompanied minors. It is not time for words it is time for action and I strongly believe that the output of this project will be a useful tool for the social workers and the unaccompanied minors themselves. This will be an important step in responding to the great challenge of smoothly integrating an unaccompanied minor in a new environment”.
The meeting of the Community of best practices and knowledge for unaccompanied minors in Europe offered to the participants the opportunity to define landmarks and common points of attention regarding the need to provide a caring attitude towards young unaccompanied minors. They also shared narratives of complex and challenging situations and presented the views of unaccompanied minors themselves on what is important to the attitudes of the social workers.
At the same time, the meeting of the Steering Committee aimed at the scheduling and evaluation of the 3rd meeting of the Community of best practices and knowledge, along with the selection of the material of the intellectual output “digital notebooks”. Moreover, the members of the Steering Committee set the next steps of the project’s implementation.
The project’s duration is 24 months and aims at promoting and reinforcing the quality of work of youth workers who come in direct contact with unaccompanied minors on a daily basis. This will be achieved through the exchange of good practices, peer learning and implementation of new tailored-made educational solutions targeted to these minors.
The project is co-funded by the European Programme ERASMUS+.
For more information about the project, please click here.
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