How to support migrant women, refugees and asylum seekers media literacy?

The computer science course of the project Media Literacy for migrant women is over. During the last 3 months, 13 women coming from different countries as Kenya, Ivory Coast, Mali, Nigeria and Chile, participated in this long learning pathway that contributed to improve their knowledge of the digital devices, to improve problem solving skills and to empower their confident in public or during a job interview.  

In this time, it has been crucial for migrant women to learn how to use properly technologies, due to the fact that is a fundamental tool to open a world of possibilities for them as writing a CV, looking for a job or a flat and search any kind of information. Moreover, technologies can support the development of creativity skills and ideas, personal and professional ambitions as becoming an entrepreneur and promoting individual projects on social networks or improving the interconnections to be more connected to their native countries. In short, thanks to this project the participants have improved their personal and academic skills and their independence, but also their freedom of thought.

Alongside three months of course, MEDLIT facilitators Silvia, Giulia and Bea worked using formal and non-formal methodologies. By giving some theoretical contents in the beginning of the lessons, by making practical exercises to go deeply on what was taught and to make contents more intelligible, the participants reached their own individual goals.

During the activities, the participants had the desire to be authors of a book. Writing the book became a learning tool and at the same time an output of the course. That’s how we started to write an intercultural recipes book, formed by the favourite recipes of our participants!

Since a lot of our participants have an entrepreneur spirit, during our lessons we also explored social media as the ways to use Facebook pages, Instagram accounts, methodologies to promote personal products and to make popular personal accounts using storytelling approaches to narrate a story. We have focused our attention on tips and practical ways to make attractive contents and reach more people.

Starting with basic levels and considering the different knowledges of our participants, we have worked hard during the past months, reaching fundamental milestones. During one of the last lessons, we improved problem solving skills on job interview and we could certainly see how much they have improved. 

Thanks to Bibliotèques sans Frontieres we created a course in an extraordinary place called Ideas Box, at Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa (Bottega 3), a space provided of all kind of materials required for an ICT course: 4 computers, 30 tablets, books, cameras and more. We found every tool to make everything special for our participants, we are very proud to have built all this together with them!

At the end of our learning pathway, we would like to invite you to participate in our final party that will take place on June 13^th 2019, from 5.30 pm to 8.30 pm, at Cre.Zi.Plus (Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa). During our final event we will present our story, our results and our milestones. An intercultural aperitif will also be offered.

We will celebrate with Ragazzi Harraga, another virtuous path that has come to an end.

We will also present to the local community our cookbook, born from an exercise during the course. We look forward to hosting you soon at Cre.Zi.Plus! Don’t miss it!