Project ”MedLIT – Media literacy for refugee, asylum seeking and migrant women”

Since refugee, asylum seeking and migrant women face a greater risk of social exclusion (being confronted with several kinds of discrimination: for being a migrant and for being women etc.), it is very important to provide them with the adequate competences — knowledge, skills and attitudes — as well as values needed to access, interpret, use and/or produce information and other media content, in the context of the internet and social media, in a safe and responsible manner, thus contributing to their integration in EU societies.

The project “Media Literacy for refugee, asylum seeking and migrant women” aimed to contribute to the integration of refugee, asylum seeking and migrant women in six EU Member States that count large numbers of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants. Partners from Austria, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Malta and the UK collaborated to achieve the following objectives:

• Encouraging (low-skilled/low-qualified) refugee, asylum seeking and migrant women to develop and upgrade their media literacy and digital skills through effective outreach-awareness raising.

Even though the project did not specifically address labour market inclusion, basic digital skills are of fundamental importance for finding a job as well and hence the project did indirectly foster the women’s employment skills.

The project developed and implemented a training course for migrant women in all partner countries, supporting them to experience for themselves how much digital and media knowledge can positively influence their present and future. The sessions had been planned within the course to increase the sense of responsibility of the course participants in order to make them aware of their importance in the process of awareness of digital tools for their entire community and been closely adapted to the real needs of participating women in the local context.

Participation in the course also became a time for the creation of role models, who, having at heart the welfare of their community, developed those skills and competences necessary to become ambassadors of new and important knowledge related to the digital world, generating a domino effect that spreads to the highest number of migrant women possible, which had been the ultimate goal of the campaign to raise peer to peer awareness.

The course was very much based on participants’ prior knowledge and interests, which resulted in the creation of a digital (and printed) booklet with recipes collected and written by the migrant women themselves, thus giving them the chance to put their newly developed digital skills directly into practice. This real-life example helped them to understand the importance and utility of digital competences, but also the endless possibilities to use these for their own interests. Needless to say, it was a big success for both, participating migrant women and people reading the booklet.

In addition to the training course on media literacy, one of the activities was a peer-to-peer awareness raising campaign, through which the participating women actively engaged with their peers in the local context to spread the word regarding the utility and possibility of digital competences and even spread their knowledge to some of their friends.

The project concluded with the presentation of their learning journey at an intercultural community event, together with the Intercultural Festival closing one of the Ragazzi Harraga workshop cycles. Thus, the participating women had the chance to further raise awareness among their peers and other community members on the importance of digital skills for social inclusion. The event saw a high number of migrant women among participants and concluded the MedLit workshop in a colourful and united way.