Students teach migrants and refugees how to use a computer, surf the web and code. Project RefugIS is financed by Microsoft Philanthrophies and promoted by the Fondazione Mondo Digitale in Italy and the Fundación Esplai in Spain. Tomorrow – Tuesday, Jan. 31 – will be dedicated to integration in Catania with the new promoters of integration, the students at ITI G. Marconi. Mayor Enzo Bianco will participate, too.
Problem Solving for Welcome and Integration
Project RefugIS
Catania, Jan. 31, 2017
ITI G. Marconi, via Vescovo Maurizio, 82
The over 350,000 refugees that arrived from the Mediterranean last year were mostly from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Eritrea, Pakistan, Somalia and Iran. More specifically, 171,785 arrived in Greece and 173,008 in Italy (UNHCR). The challenge is to overcome linguistic and cultural differences through the common digital code and accelerate their acquisition of strategic competences for integration. The protagonist of this new basic welcome model is school and the students who can act as natural mediators amongst cultures and languages, analogue and digital.
The objective of Project RefugIS, financed by Microsoft Philanthrophies and promoted by the Fondazione Mondo Digitale in Italy and the Fundación Esplai in Spain, is to introduce 650 foreign citizens to the basics of IT and coding and improve their employment opportunities and accelerate their process of integration in their host country. The immigrants and refugees will be taught by school students to use a range of digital tools provided by Microsoft thanks to the successful social learning model that has been tested by the Fondazione Mondo Digitale in a number of different contexts.
Project RefugIS will be presented in Catania tomorrow – Tuesday, Jan. 31 at 11 am – during the “Problem Solving for Welcome and Integration” event at ITI G. Marconi. Following a welcome by Heamaster Ugo Pirrone and Mayor Enzo Bianco will participate, the floor will be turned over to the protagonists of the original welcome formula: Francesca Del Duca, Project Manager RefugIS, Fondazione Mondo Digitale; Paola Andreozzi (in videoconference), CSR Manager, Microsoft Italia; Emiliano Abramo, Spokesperson, Comunità di Sant'Egidio Sicilia.
The meeting will be held with the Fundación Esplai, project partner in Spain. At 11.30, the project will begin with the first coding labs for immigrants and refugees held by students at ITI G.Marconi in Catania.
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