EUROSUD students may apply for funding for activities linked to the programme and/or their related career development that reflect the ethos and learning objectives of the degree programme. Below, we hear from Mariana, who did an internship at an institution called Madrid for Refugees, an NGO that helps Forcibly Displaced Persons in Madrid to rebuild their lives after their status is granted.
My name is Mariana, I am in my final year of the EUROSUD Master, and thanks to the Career Development Fund, I had the honour to participate in the Empowering NEET-s across Europe: A peer learning approach training. Although I am a research student, I decided to take an internship at an institution called Madrid for Refugees, an NGO that helps Forcibly Displaced Persons in Madrid to rebuild their lives after their status is granted.
In MfR, my role is to give psychosocial training about Psychological First Aid, Migratory Grief and Intercultural Skills to new volunteers and stakeholders, and I am also Employability Coordinator, helping our beneficiaries to develop their careers.
Due to this, I was invited to take part in this training provided by the organization Youth Proaktiv, with other two institutions: EKO from Greece and KKS from Slovenia. Together we explored problems and solutions on how to get young NEETs to be economically, democratically and socially activated, and as a result of our work, a toolkit is being produced with the best practices among our institutions and how can we further improve the attention to young people through projects that envision enhance their digital, economic, social and democratic skills.
Representing Madrid For Refugees I had the opportunity to show that young Forcibly Displaced Populations are also a targeted group, since according to studies, having a migration background increases the youth person’s likelihood of becoming NEET by 70% (Eurofound 2012). Therefore, the probability of FDPs in NEET status is high, becoming a socioeconomic concern, and increasing the difficulty in achieving settlement and social inclusion.
By Mariana Souza Mattos