Get ready for immigrants

Poland is a new-immigration country and does not have much experience with this issue. ‘Take a course on multiculturalism. Education on human rights and multiculturalism as a key to build an open society accepting third-country nationals’ will last for 3 years. Its aim is to support the integration of immigrants from third countries by preparing public sector staff (in state institutions on national and local level responsible for education, law enforcement, public health and social work) for the proper and aware contact with newcomers. The first step is to design a set of primary multicultural competences and knowledge for the target group about law, migration issues and immigrants’ countries and cultures.

Course for the public sector

The second step is a 10-month course for trainers (public sector employees recruited from all regions of Poland) providing the broad knowledge and skills for the group work. Later, trainers will multiply their knowledge organizing several workshops all over Poland. An e-handbook for trainers prepared during the project will be an additional support. It will consist of examples and methodology on how to perform a workshop, case-studies and theory on the topic of migration, integration, human rights, non-discrimination, multicultural communication and more. E-handbook for trainers will also gather a law and duties of the public sector staff towards the third-country nationals and vice versa.

Programme addressed to the  society

The second publication – vademecum, will contain the complex knowledge of multiculturalism, migration and integration of immigrants from third countries. The unique character of the publication will be achieved thanks to the different perspectives presented (legal, sociological, anthropological and psychological) as well as the knowledge of the background and needs of target readers helping to get to know an issue of immigrant adaptation process. The information about countries of origin of the biggest immigration groups in Poland: Armenia, Vietnam, Ukraine, Belarus, the Russian Federation, the People´s Republic of China, India and Indonesia will be the additional value.

The web page of the project will be regularly updated with the media news on migrations, descriptions of the interventions taken by the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, information about multicultural and non-discrimination events as well as the valuable publications, so everyone can find the good quality information there.

‘Take a course on multiculturalism’ project gained support of the European Fund for the Integration of third-country nationals and Polish government (Activity 3: Activities for building institutional system in Poland).

Jan Dąbkowski

Project webpage http://www.hfhrpol.waw.pl/wezkurs (in Polish).