Parents’ Compass – supporting newly arrived migrants, especially parents and families to start their normal life
The core of the project is a multilingual website that collects basic information for parents offering help, and will also offer templates to be downloaded and printed with basic information in the languages of newly arrived migrants.
In most EU countries there is an obligation for parents to enrol their children in schools shortly after arriving to the country. Schools as education institutions are the best interface to also provide services to parents to support them in several areas, for example:
- understanding the school system and obligations for their children
- understanding social services and child support available for them
- how to use everyday services – housing, infrastructure (gas, electricity, internet, mobile), financial services (opening a bank account), health services, shopping, cultural offer, free time activities, etc.
- how to find employment, how to validate their skills
- social and family support available
- how special needs – physical, mental, dietary
- learning basic language of the hosting country
- providing for the basic right of the child to mother tongue and home culture
When entering the website first there will be a choice of country and then choice of language (national, Arabic, Pashto, Urdu…). All versions will contain downloadable information and also suggestions for tried and tested, as well as newly developed activities to involve the newly arrived parents, to support them to be involved in school life and also to help them get used to the new country. Activities will also be offered to help parents to provide for their children in mother tongue education and also home culture. When developing the activities part, we will rely on ALCUIN winner projects as a starting point.
During the project some short-term trainings will also be organised for activists of parents’ associations to exchange experiences and work out new activities together.
The project is carried our with financing from the Open Society Foundation as part of a group of projects supporting migrant children.