The meeting of LikeHome: Assessing and recognizing the prior learning of migrants: Bridging the gap and paving the road to educational and social integration project took place in Brussels 13th and 14th December 2017 and discussed numerous ways in which newly arrived migrants and refugees could be offered education and social integration.

In this respect, project coordinator Carolina Madeleine, from the University of Alicante, started the panel by reviewing the workflow of the project’s management LikeHome. If you are interested in this project, you can take a look here.

The overall aim of the LikeHome project is to foster the inclusion of newly arrived migrants and refugees to the host country education and training system, to the local economy and to the society in general. More specifically, LikeHome project’s strategic objective is to design and deliver a framework of best practices, based on practices that have been successfully used in other cases, for the assessment and recognition of migrants’ prior learning, qualifications and competencies. A set of e-tools is also delivered to support this goal.

After Madeleine’s intervention, Christoph Grandits discussed the conclusions drawn from a report made to the target groups of the project: newly arrived migrants and refugees. In so doing, Grandits stated that the LikeHome Portal, which will be integrated in the website, will be the means to access to the e-tool, where Mahara will be the reference point. The session also debated the e-assessment tools and database, the project administrative and financial management issues, and the adaptation of the best practices and development of the LikeHome framework for migrants’ skills qualification.

A. Giusti, from Eurotraining, touched upon how to best achieve the quality assurance for the project and how to carry out the evaluation of the project results. Finally, the discussion was focused on how to gain the maximum from stakeholders’ analysis (EOPPEP) and several opinions were also given on the dissemination plan for the project.

In summary, the objectives of the project discussed during the meeting were the following:

1. Develop the recognition process in the labour market in order to overcome the obstacles to find an adequate employment.
2. Make available tools to prove migrants’ ability to use their competencies in the labour market.
3. Create an e-tool for migrants and refugees that assesses basic computer knowledge, the use of smartphones and the ability to switch between languages.
4. Implement language courses to help them to integrate in the labour market as well as courses about the host country legislation, obligations and rights.