Description
On Monday’s between19:00 - 20:30 and twice on Wednesday’s (16:30 - 18:30 & 19:00 - 20:30) Serve the City, a non-profit voluntary organisation, runs a volunteer homework project and sports and recreation project called Serve Now at Leopold Asylum Seeker Centre which houses around 350 people including many children in the Brussels commune of Etterbeek. Volunteers support refugee and asylum-seeking children in different areas, including maths, language or general study. The objective is to give young people living in the centre help that is often lacking, foster community and inclusion with the host culture, and improve both physical and mental health for people who have experienced loss and sometimes trauma. It also encourages host country volunteers to engage with people living in the centres and to thereby foster understanding within the host culture. Volunteers also run games and sports activities once a week for students living in the centre. The programme is funded by donations and the workers are volunteers from across Brussels.
- Children's academic skills
- Children's competence in host language
- Children's life satisfaction / happiness
- Children's sense of belonging
- Friends and peers (bridges)
- Friends and peers (support)
- Institutions
Evaluation ex post
Information not available
Projects’ deliverables
Information and communication via the Website, the Serve Now app, and Serve the City social media (Twitter, Facebook).
Reproducibility
Information not available
Motivation for the submission
This is a grass roots movement encouraging host engagement through volunteering with newly arrived refugee and asylum-seeking children, which fosters an engaged and inclusive integration of young people with the host culture, particularly through education and sport.
