ESC: Solidarity in Practice (Stockholm, Sweden)

Föreningen Framtidståget is working with the inclusion and empowerment of people who face difficult life situations. Our mission is fulfilled in two main ways: professional social work and youth work. Our local work is concentrated in the Stockholm region and our international work focuses on development efforts in Morocco, specifically the area of the city of Larache. The target groups for our organization are the following: - Asylum seekers and immigrants, approximately 85% of all beneficiaries are young people; - Young people in vulnerable situations: young people involved in criminality; young people who are victims of violence; young people in NEET; young people with social difficulties and psychological diagnoses or in substance abuse; unaccompanied minors; young people from areas with socioeconomic challenges; - Families where children and young people suffer from different forms of violence. The social work department works with these target groups by providing professional social work services to municipalities in Stockholm and Stockholm region. Their main areas of work are: supporting young people through contact persons who act as “professional friends”; placing children and young people in foster families, offering support and guidance to the foster families; providing family therapy to families where children and young people suffer from different forms of violence. In our youth work, we focus on working with people that are at risk of being in situations of exclusion, young people with fewer opportunities and asylum - seekers. Our focus is empowering young people by providing them with opportunities for professional and personal development and the acquiring of practical skills and competencies that are relevant in today’s world. Our youth work consists of the following main areas: 1. Providing educational courses for asylum-seekers (approximately 85% of them are young people), designed to develop their practical skills and increase chances of employability in the future. We have worked with the target group for three years. We started the activities in 2019 and focused mainly on young asylum-seekers from North Africa, in 2020 we enlarged our target group to include all asylum-seekers in Sweden. In 2021 the activities focus mainly on developing practical skills and competencies and include: - Cooking activity “Intergastro” (held once every two weeks, the goal is to practice Swedish and English, network and develop soft skills); - Barbershop Course (held twice a week with a goal to learn basics in barbering); - Video Production course (held three times a week with a goal to learn basics in video production and develop digital skills); - Smartphone Workshop (held three times a week with a goal to learn basics in repairing mobile phones). Our future plans include setting up a coding school for young immigrants in Stockholm with the help of the Erasmus+ KA-2 project "Migracode" that we are coordinating. 2. Empowering young people from socially and economically vulnerable (segregated) areas. This is a new area of our work that we have started in 2021 and is a part of our strategic development plan for the upcoming years. We have already started cooperation with organizations working with the same target group (Jobbtorg and Ung Arena) and applied for a Delmos grant for a project that is designed to decrease the consequences of segregation on young people. 3. Offering young people opportunities for personal and professional development through Erasmus+ and ESC international mobilities. We work with young people that we meet in our regular local activities and social work. At the moment, we have around 40 young people that we meet through our practical education for asylum-seekers and newcomers and around 30-40 young people that we meet through our social work yearly. We also reach out to other young people who are not involved in our local activities. We work with young people from the Stockholm area as well as other regions. For example, we have good cooperation with Örebro municipality and have been involving young people in NEET that they work within our mobility projects. Together with our partners, we have implemented our mobility projects in approximately 15 countries. We have worked with Erasmus+ since 2013. Principles of our work: Framtidståget is a diverse group of professionals whose work is guided by the principle of cultural sensitivity and appreciation for difference. In our local projects, we are trying to create meeting points for people of different ages, ethnicity, and status in Sweden. In our international projects, we put a high value on promoting diversity and intercultural dialogue. Other principles that are central to our work at Framtidståget are an individual approach to and extra focus on building trustful relations with every person that we are working with, believe that all people have equal worth and that everyone deserves a second and third chance in their lives.