SUPEER: Create bridges through the peer support

Dialogue between young people from minority communities and young people from local communities can contribute effectively to countering social isolation and exclusion, but above all, it is a way to strengthen intercultural skills, mutual understanding and peer empowerment.

With these principles was born the SUPEER project, which for 30 months will try to facilitate the social inclusion of young migrants or ethnic minorities, creating a system of peer support with young people from the majority communities of each partner country.

The introductory meeting of the SUPEER – Sustainable Integration Through Peer-to-Peer Support project took place on 8 and 9 April 2019, hosted by CLAVIS the coordinator of the project, in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The two-day meeting was crucial for the project to get off to a good start. It was an opportunity, not only to get to know better the local realities of each partner country and the daily work of the organisations that are part of the project, but they were also crucial days for the development of the first reflections and decisions on the future of the project.

In the months following the first meeting, each partner started a national research on the key concepts of the project, which were exposed and addressed during the second project meeting, a joint staff training held in Palermo on 15, 16 and 17 July 2019.

During these three days, through well-established non-formal methodologies such as Open Space or Edward De Bono’s “Six Hats“, were discussed the meaning of empowerment, peer learning, social and cultural capital, citizenship, sense of belonging and how all these concepts can be transmitted and put into practice through peer support activities. This has contributed to the development of the first steps towards the creation of an innovative methodology of collaborative peer learning.

In the coming months, an Intercultural Mentoring Programme will be developed to improve the dialogue between cultures, active citizenship and transversal competences of young people, which will then be implemented in each partner country of the project, through non-formal activities and training workshops.

All results, tools and news will be shared on the project website and on the Facebook page.