In a nutshell
The European Commission is pleased to announce the organisation of the workshop on Understanding the role of ICT in the integration of Immigrant and Ethnic Minorities (IEM), on November 23rd, 2010, in Brussels, which aims to encourage the sharing of good practices and research studies in the area of ICT-enabled or supported IEM participation in lifelong learning, improved employability and social integration.
The theme of this workshop is on the cross road of different key priorities of the Europe 2020 policy:
- To promote digital inclusion and empowerment of all European citizens, especially through actions in support of digital and media literacy/skilling for employability, learning, creating, participating , being confident and discerning in the use of digital media (Flagship initiative: Digital Agenda for Europe);
- To support migrants better integration in the workforce (Flagship initiative: European Platform against Poverty);
- To modernise labour markets by facilitating labour mobility and the development of skills throughout the lifecycle with a view to increase labour participation and better match labour supply and demand (Flagship initiative: An agenda for new skills and jobs);
- To promote the recognition of non-formal and informal learning (Flagship initiative: Youth on the Move).
Besides, it is also in line with the objectives of the Stockholm Programme on Integration, which aims to provide modules on three topics: 1) introductory courses including language classes; 2) strong commitment by the host community; and 3) active participation of immigrants in all aspects of collective life.
Recent research has shown the importance of ICT (among which social computing applications seems to play a specifically important role) in the process of enabling the socio-economic integration of IEM people and fostering cultural diversity in our European knowledge societies. Different types of integration where ICT play a role can be distinguished, as top-down and mediated integration, which relies upon online welcoming and integration services provided by public or third sector social organisations which are increasingly taking advantage of ICT to facilitate the integration of IEM; or bottom-up integration, which relies on informal hospitality and is directly linked to social networking processes between migrants and members of the host society. But there is still little evidence on the digital patterns of IEM people, their digital competences, ICT access and use, and how they are benefiting from ICT-enabled or supported initiatives to increase their autonomy, integration and contribution to the development of their hosting societies.
Topics
The topics to be covered by the ICT-enabled initiatives and research studies at the workshop include:
- ICT-enabled participation of IEM to Lifelong learning;
- ICT-enhanced employability of IEM, including entrepreneurship;
- ICT-enabled social integration of IEM.
Each topic will be addressed considering these aspects:
- Access to IEM and identification of their needs;
- Empowerment of IEM through ICT;
- Impact measurement: aspects to consider and appropriate methodologies/tools (i.e. what is measured and how).
The overall objective of this workshop is to exchange among practitioners and field researchers current initiatives and research carried out in the field of ICT and IEM in Europe.
Who should attend?
The workshop is open to public, social and private practitioners, experts, researchers and policy makers with relevant experience in this specific field, or interested to learn about. Through their participation, potential presentation and discussions in the workshop session, practitioners, stakeholders, researchers and policy makers will be able to learn about the current situation in the socio-economic integration of IEM enabled by ICT, and also transmit their points of view for now and for the future.
Call for presentations:
Those interested in speaking should register to the workshop and submit an original and concise proposal, which should be based on one or more real cases, by November 12th, 2010. Potential speakers are encouraged to submit the case(s) of their presentation to the ePractice case repository (http://www.epractice.eu/en/cases), if this has not been done yet.
All proposals for presentations should be submitted to events@eurodyn.com with a copy to vassilia.orfanou@eurodyn.com and Gabriel.Rissola@ec.europa.eu. Accepted formats of presentation submission are: .ppt and .pdf.
Registration
To register for this event, prior registration to ePractice is required at http://www.epractice.eu/en/user/register, with subsequent registration to this workshop.
Potential attendees and speakers may indicate their interest to participate in the workshop by following an easy registration process by creating an ePractice account as indicated above and activate their registration to the workshop by clicking on the yellow button that reads "participate in this workshop" to activate their registration to the workshop.
Structure
The workshop will take place on November 23rd, 2010. The workshop will consist of presentations by project representatives, individual eInclusion practitioners, policy actors, researchers, lobbyists, alongside discussion sessions. The latter will primarily address implementation challenges and needs.
Types of activities envisaged are short presentations and working group or plenary discussions. Speakers will be selected by the event organisers in collaboration with the European Commission on the basis of short, factual and clear presentations.
Please, notice that the ICT for cultural diversity and local integration community has a pronounced interest in gathering significant and relevant projects/cases across Europe that may be submitted through the ePractice case repository (http://www.epractice.eu/en/cases). In this aim, the "Understanding the role of ICT in the integration of Immigrant and Ethnic Minorities (IEM)" workshop is highly interested to review presentations that are related to specific cases and welcomes all interested parties to join the community.
Submission guidelines
The workshop is open to all and is free of any incurred charges. Interested parties to present in the workshop should primarily register online and submit a proposal for an original and concise presentation (few slides and descriptive summary) by November 5th, 2010. Proposals should also include contact information such as name, surname, and email.
All people that have submitted a proposal will be informed by November 10th whether or not they have been retained as speakers. Selected proposals should be refined and submitted in full (not exceeding 7 slides) by November 17th, 2010. Proposals should be based on one or more real cases submitted or to be submitted through the ePractice case repository (http://www.epractice.eu/en/cases).
For the homogeneisation of the presentations, they will include the following information:Â
- Identity of the speaker and type of stakeholder (e.g. public authority, practitioner, academic, consultant, etc);
- Title of the presentation and weather it consists on an initiative or a study;
- Case/s that the presentation will refer to;
- Identity of those responsible for the case(s) and their profile (public authority, private entity, not-for-profit entity, etc;
- Geographical scope;
- Operational status (e.g. pilot, ongoing, finalised, expanding inside/ outside borders);
- Topic/s covered (1. ICT-enabled participation of IEM to Lifelong learning; 2. ICT-enabled IEM employability and entrepreneurship; 3. ICT-enabled social integration of IEM) and how;
- Aspect/s covered (1. Access to IEM and identification of their needs, 2. Empowerment of IEM through ICT, 3) Impact measurement: aspects to consider and appropriate methodologies/tools (i.e. what is measured and how);
- Type of ICT used to reach/engage the IEM, its purpose/s and implementation (how it worked). In the case of studies, also if a specific ICT tool was to reach them (e.g. online surveys);
- Results, impact (whenever possible quantified) and lessons learnt for the future.
The proposals for presentation will be assessed considering the relevance and clarity of the information indicated above as well characteristics of the case(s) to which the presentations refer to, notably: their potential for networking and scalability, their added-value and demonstrable impact for IEM integration and digital inclusion.
All proposals for presentations should be submitted to events@eurodyn.com with a copy to vassilia.orfanou@eurodyn.com and Gabriel.Rissola@ec.europa.eu. Accepted formats of presentation submission are: .ppt and .pdf. To register for this event, prior registration to ePractice at  http://www.epractice.eu/en/user/register is required, with subsequent registration to this workshop.
Following the end of the workshop sessions, the report and presentations will be available online, in the aim to follow up with an online discussion. Therefore, we would highly encourage your participation by joining the ICT for cultural diversity and local integration community.
Important deadlines:
- Submission of draft abstracts/presentations by November 5, 2010.
- Speaker confirmation by November 10, 2010.
- Submission of final presentations by November 17, 2010 (by 6:00 p.m. CET).
- Workshop date: November 23, 2010.
- Publication of workshop proceedings: January 2011.
Venue
Rue de Champs de Mars, 21 CDMA SDR2, Brussels 1050.
Contact
For more information, registration and abstract submissions, please direct all communication to: events@eurodyn.com.
Stats
This workshop accomodated 44 attendees and 14 speakers
In order to vote, you need to be logged in!
