Highlight on integration in the Nordplus 2017 application round

The current situation with refugees and immigration puts new demands on the Nordic countries and societies. Educational systems within all sectors are faced with challenges on how to respond properly and adequately to these changes in student and learner populations.

In 2017 and 2018 Nordplus is highlighting the theme of integration in education and therefore encouraging applications aiming at education and training for refugees and immigrants within all educational sectors and for all Nordplus programmes.

This year’s application round in Nordplus has seen many projects revolving around the theme of integration and in practice working with education and training for refugees and immigrants, says Malene Vangdrup, Nordplus Adult main administrator.

In the application round of March 2017 Nordplus received applications involving a total number of 3.819 organisations involved in 582 applications. One of the 403 applications that has been granted funding is a collaboration project between the Norwegian Red Cross, Danish Red Cross, Swedish Red Cross and Iceland Red Cross aiming to find best practice for the Red Cross Refugee guide programs.

Best practices and experiences

The project is based on the knowledge and experience the participating organisations and volunteers have within the Red Cross Refugee guide program targeting newly settled refugees for better integration in local society and language learning.

Malene Vangdrup, Nordplus Adult main administrator:

It will be interesting to follow how this particular project with the Red Cross from four Nordic countries will exchange best practices and experiences from each organisation’s volunteers on language learning for newly arrived refugees and their integration in the local societies.

The main objective for the project is exchange of knowledge and networking activities between the NGOs. The second aim is to use the collected experiences as a tool of recommendation for Iceland as they are extending volunteer services to refugees who have come through the asylum system. This recommendation will be done in a report.

The project will start already in August and continue until February 2018. 

Factbox

Nordplus offers financial support to a variety of educational cooperations between partners in the area of lifelong learning between the eight participating countries and three autonomous regions in the Baltic and Nordic region.

• The program supports networking, project collaboration and student/teacher mobility between the Baltic and Nordic countries
• Overall programme budget for 2017 is 10,2 million euro

Read more about the Nordic Council of Ministers' initiative on integration of immigrants and refugees here: www.integrationnorden.org (in Scandinavian languages only)