Education

Youth Clubs for Refugees and Host Communities

  • India
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Organization:

BOSCO Refugee Assistance Program

Date program started:

 

Purpose:

  • Provide spaces for refugee youth to come together, promote awareness and interact with host communities

Objective:

  • To foster interaction with the host community
  • To raise awareness within the refugee community of issues of education, health and sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV)
  • To improve the inclusion of elderly and disabled refugees

Targeted population:

  • All refugees living in Delhi, including youth and elderly refugees
  • Refugees from Afghanistan, Myanmar and Somalia

Challenge addressed:

  • Discrimination against refugees by the host community

Program description:

  • In New Delhi, there are 10 youth clubs based on nationality and geographic location
  • Each club holds a meeting in the first week of every month, with larger meetings of all clubs occuring less frequently
  • Each club has 2 male and 2 female leaders
  • Activities have included language classes (including Hindi and French), food distribution, home visits to the elderly, film screenings, medicine distribution and sessions on the issues surrounding alcoholism
  • Sessions run by the youth clubs have focused on life skills, integration, team building and living in harmony with the host community
  • The youth clubs have also run campaigns on issues including reproductive health, substance abuse, HIV/AIDS and gender-based violence, which has utilised street plays, folk media and pamphlet distribution
  • 70% of the club attendees come from the refugee population and 30% come from the host population
  • Each club carries out awareness campaigns and engages with elderly and disabled people
  • 2,000 Indian Rupees is provided to each club each month to support their activities
  • 1,000 Indian Rupees were also provided to each leader per month

Impact on targeted population:

  • Increased community support to elderly and disabled refugees
  • Increased awareness within the refugee community of a range of issues, including those relating to health, education and sexual and gender-based violence

Impact on host population:

  • More members of the host population have now interacted with refugees
  • Increased knowledge of refugee issues, including their culture and understanding of why they had to leave their country

Conditions required:

  • Support for refugee youth to organisae and form clubs, including giving them ownership of the program and ability to identify issues and responses themselves

Support for program:

  • A budget of 600,000 Indian Rupees was made available to support this program
  • Bosco Delhi has been an implementing partner of UNHCR since 2002

Resources:

UNHCR India – Implementing Partners

Our impact

  • 3700

    refugees have better access to education and livelihood opportunities

  • 40

    countries in which our partner NGOs are implementing solutions

  • 490

    refugee children benefit from mathematics, english, art and sports classes

  • 700

    women can now support their families

  • 650

    refugees have access to critical healthcare and safety information

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