Chapter 5 - Examples of good practice

Good practice is to be found in the communities with comfortable and welcoming environment for new coming families. Programs which are successfully with diverse partners and families have an explicit parent engagement and outreach strategy that all staff understand and support.

Take a look at this two videos and you will see how Austria and Greece integrated refugees in their comunity and have created win-win situation.

Speak language of immigrant’s parents

At the beginning of programs is very important to speak in parent’s language - otherwise they are just wasting their time and don´t understand anything.  Parent support in their own language is very important - they will enroll their child where this support is.

You can, for example ask someone from the community who can speak your language to be translator.  (Immigrant parents and early childhood programs, pg. 22)

Workshops for developing multicultural skills

In Slovenia, these workshops are organized for parents, children and educators. The aim is to encourage them for better and respectful relationships and understanding each other. In workshops, they try to point out language and cultural similarities and differences. Activities can be organized only for children or for children and parents.  If parents are involved, workshops must be organized at afternoon and they have to be invited in time with an written invitation. At workshops, different opportunities for parents and children in local environment are presented: public organizations, NGO, which offer different supportive networks. (Priročnik za izvajanje programa Uspešno vključevanje otrok priseljencev; ISA institut Ljubljana, 2015)

Examples of workshops for parents and children

• Fortifying the families: workshops where families represent their country: presentation of culture, country, food, celebrations. They can have activities as: making Christmas cards, preparing food together...
• School for Mums, where mums from different country and school teachers meet at afternoon once per month. They talk about their countries, eat typical food, prepare food or tea together. Point of meetings is to bond, help immigrant mums to integrate into a society and explain them how country works.
• Foreign language for parents, which goes together with presentation of school/kindergarten, city where they live, important buildings they will use in everyday life. They get to know words and expressions they will use in school/kindergartens: rooms in kindergartens, timetable, web sites of school/kindergarten, menu, written apology of non-attendance (they write one example). (Priročnik za izvajanje programa Uspešno vključevanje otrok priseljencev; ISA institut Ljubljana, 2015
• Program for immigrant wifes: getting to know the local environment. ​Program is designed especially for wifes of immigrants, because they usually stay at home, so their chances to integrate into a new society are very low. Women in program and their mentor visit important buildings in local environment, which they will use in their everyday life and organizations who offer help to immigrants: library, centre of social work, employment service, market ... and also cultural and natural sights, so that they can get the impression about their new environment and new cultural habits.  Participants will meet  local people, speak language of new country and practice communication skills  in positive atmosphere. Beside getting to know local environment, women will also get in touch with each other, what couldn´t be possible if they would stay at home. Another useful part of the program is visit to possible interested employees. Mentor chooses the most appropriate employer  regarding interests of the group. Both, women and employees have to be prepared for the visit and cooperate actively. (Barbara Fajdiga Perše, Tanja Krpan, I AM AN ACTIVE MEMBER OF A MULTINATIONAL SOCIETY Programme for social integration of women – third country nationals: Methodology and guidelines for train the trainer course, Ljudska univerza Nova Gorica, 2016)

Other learning tools: 

• Migrant Education and Community Inclusion, Examples of Good Practice; Sirus Network Policy Brief Series, 2015
• http://solskilonec.si/
• http://prehrana.si/moja-prehrana/predsolski-otroci
• http://www.ellynsatterinstitute.org/index.php
• Erin K. Eliassen,The Impact of Teachers and Families on Young Children’s Eating Behaviors​

Tips: how to implement the topic to everyday life:

Strategies to build ties with immigrant parents - please see above

Tips for more information outside of the course:

• Priročnik za izvajanje programa Uspešno vključevanje otrok priseljencev; ISA institut Ljubljana, 2015
• Smernice za vključevanje otrok priseljencev v vrtce in šole; zavod Republike Slovenije za šolstvo, Ljubljana, 2012
• Inkluzija otrok priseljencev v izobraževanje, eknjiga, Ravne na Koroškem, 2016