From the 7th till the 11th November, 3 representatives of the municipality of Santa Margarida de Montbui, together with Fundació Catalunya Voluntària, took part for the first time in a European mobility project hosted in Lisbon: ‘Cities of Welcome’.
The participants were Soundous, member of the youth comission El Tineret, Sandra, youth employment referent of Santa Margarida de Montbui’s municipality, and Júlia, youth worker, also from the municipality.
This project, coordinated by the organizations Migrafrica (Germany) and DYPALL (Portugal), consists of promoting active participation of migrant youth and youth from migrant backgrounds. During the stay we were able to discover good practices to develop our action plan in the municipality of Santa Margarida de Montbui.
Some of the practices that impressed us the most were: the round table on experiences with the organizations Comparte & Youth, Crescer and Xose, where they tackled and reflected on the involvement of youth from migrant background in society and suggested alternatives and solutions to improve their situation; the visit to Pendao em movimento in the city of Sintra, where we got to know a neighbourhood with a self-managed centre where the decisions are taken collectively and the proposals from the neighbours are taken into account and valued; and at last, we want to remark the presentation of the youth association JIPANGUE, example of participation and real mobilization of young people in and for the community. We want to highlight this last association, it really attracted our attention because of the motivation and implication that the speaker showed, you could feel the illusion she put on the project as it was created by herself, together with other youngsters.
We would also like to highlight the active methodology and cooperative work which was used during the whole week, as well as the implication and diversity of the coordinating and participant organizations, which were actively involved in every moment so all the activities and the project developed in the best possible way.
In conclusion, it was a very interesting study visit, where we were able to meet the participants from other countries, get to know about communitarian initiatives working with youth in Lisbon and its surroundings. As it was mentioned before, we discovered cities where we could confirm that they are actually carrying out actions to improve the personal and professional situation of youth from migrant backgrounds. It was a very enriching experience both at the personal and professional level.