ProLanguage

The ProLanguage project is a multiple partner project that will address how language and language policies in refugee camps, and in facilities outside refugee camps that are accessible to refugees, can enhance their physical and mental health, act as social protection, enhance their chances for mobility, and facilitate their integration into the destination society.

The network has the following objectives:

  • Explore how language can facilitate communication, access to information and services, and physical and psychological well-being of people living in refugee settings;
  • identify language needs in refugee camps in terms of education and health, including the language needs of Unaccompanied Minor Asylum-Seekers (UAMAS);
  • identify how language skills can enhance the mobility chances of people living in refugee camps;
  • explore how structures in refugee camps can support language needs/services and training of refugees providing useful and cost-effective support;
  • identify the training and professional development needs in terms of language teaching, language policy, and translation practice for people working or volunteering in refugee camps;
  • explore how social media and apps can be beneficial to language teaching, practice and policy, and evaluate the effectiveness of Computer Assisted Language Learning and Massive Open Online Courses for providing education for hard to reach learners;
  • share good practice between people working in education and health inside or outside refugee camps;
  • explore whether book-sharing activities are suited for children in refugee settings;
  • engage with research and policy makers dealing with migrants’ and refugees’ education, health, social inclusion, with academics in the UK, Greece, Italy, Lebanon, and Tunisia in order to setup a bidirectional information flow and joint activities for capacity-building regarding methods and practices in existing or future identification and intervention programmes at the international, national and local scale;
  • build on the outcomes of the interdisciplinary network activities by engaging in a joint grant application addressing language teaching, education programmes and social inclusiveness of refugees through language. This will lead to the maintenance of contacts and strengthening of collaboration between the academic and non-academic stakeholders of the network after the grant ends. As such, the proposed network is directly relevant to educational challenges that governmental and non-governmental bodies face in addressing accessibility of information, language provision, and wellbeing.