ELIX, supported by UNICEF and funded by the European Commission (DG ECHO), started in October 2017 the implement of an educational training in Attica for refugee and migrant children, aged 3-17 and their parents.
The aim of this program is to provide non-formal education and homework support to children, refugee and migrants, as well as to their parents, in order to contribute to their smooth integration into the public education system through innovative educational methods.
The program is designed to provide daily coverage for the educational needs of children, aged 3-17 and support the study of those who go to public school. Each student attends 2 hours of lessons a day (10 hours a week), which are held in the morning or afternoon hours.
All courses are conducted by experienced Greek-certified teachers and are supported by teachers from the communities of our pupils who act as cultural mediators and facilitate the understanding of the lesson in the mother tongue of the beneficiaries.
This project also includes social workers who identify vulnerable situations and provide additional support to children and their families. Also, accredited psychologists provide support to both the staff and the beneficiaries of the program.
In this context and during this period, ELIX Social Workers offered a total of 232 meetings (with children and /or their parents) in all of our six educational centers and made 73 health referrals, 9 for housing and 22 for mental health issues, while the rest concerned child protection, security, domestic violence,
At the same time, they contributed to the registration of 14 children in the public education system and formal education.
More specifically, the project includes:
- Preschool lessons for children aged 3-5 years.
- Greek language lessons for children aged 6-17.
- English-language lessons for children aged 6-17.
- Positive science lessons for children aged 6-17.
- Basic life skills classes.
- Greek and English language lessons for parents.
Also, the program included a number of out-of-school activities and educational visits such as seminar for urban gardening and a visit to the Organization Earth’s Centre in Ilion.
A brief review of the program for the months of November-December 2018
- 1,334 children aged 3-17 have a total of 758 boys and 576 girls enrolled in the program.
- 176 parents, 69 men, 85 women.
- 28 different nationalities and 18 different mother tongues.
- 4,002 hourly classes (Greek & Mathematics and English) were provided to children and 336 hourly classes to parents.
- 54 teachers (including translators), 3 social workers and two psychologists staffed the program as a whole and supported their children and their families.
As part of the training of ELIX’s staff, our employees attended training such as: The two-day workshop "Refugee Education: Challenges and Practices" organized by the Hellenic Observatory for Intercultural Education and Training and UNICEF, seminars on pre-school education, Intercultural Communication, Post-Traumatic Stress, Binary and Trinitarian Relations, as well as the teaching of Greek as a second language, while participating in the Workshop organized by ELIX in December, entitled "Innovative Approaches to Education for Children, Migrants and Refugees".
In Attica, the program is being implemented in 6 educational centers: In the camps of Eleonas and Skaramangas, in ELIX’s main learning center in Patision and in three public schools under the “Open Schools Project” by the Municipality of Athens, implemented with founding donor the Stavros Niarchos Foundation and the coordination of the Athens Partnership.
