A group of volunteers from Italy visited the lectures - "We see it this way – reframing narratives about migration"

23. May 2023.

On May 18, a group of volunteers from Italy visited the Faculty of Teachers in the Hungarian language of instruction, where they were hosted by third-year communication students at one of their lectures. The lectures are part of the project "We see it this way – reframing narratives about migration" which is implemented by the Ecumenical Humanitarian Organization in partnership with the Faculty, with the support of IOM (International Organization for Migration) and Switzerland. At the lecture, we also showed a documentary film, which was created as part of the EHO project "Humanitarian assistance and protection related intervention to people on the move in Serbia", which was financed by HEKS/EPER. Six young people from Italy, with their two mentors, came through the program of the /Balcanicamente/ organization, whose goal is to present in their country another route by which people on the move arrive - the Balkan route.In Italy, namely, the Mediterranean route.Their goal is to turn numbers into lives, to point out that 100 migrants/refugees are actually 100 life stories! They conveyed this to us in their lecture, in which they presented their local initiatives, such as a social house, where refugees/migrants can get accommodation, whether they are from Ukraine or Palestine, and where they organize programs for easier integration. It was very interesting to see the different situations in these two countries, Serbia and Italy. Here most people are on the move/transition, while there most want to stay. This phenomenon is accompanied by completely different challenges. In our country, people avoid migrants/refugees because of the public narrative that mainly conveys news about armed conflicts, while there they worry more about the lack of places in kindergartens. After the conversation, one part of the local group together with the group
from Italy visited the Serbian-Hungarian border and continued the exchange of experiences.